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Richard Brenneman: Markos Moulitsas—Kos to his hordes of readers—enjoys a moment in the sun outside a South Berkeley coffee shop, before heading to his newly bought nearby home, where he runs the world’s most popular political blog—dailykos.com—from his bedroom.

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Richard Brenneman: Markos Moulitsas—Kos to his hordes of readers—enjoys a moment in the sun outside a South Berkeley coffee shop, before heading to his newly bought nearby home, where he runs the world’s most popular political blog—dailykos.com—from his bedroom.

For political cognoscenti, a day just isn’t complete without a Daily Kos fix.

That’s good news for new South Berkeley resident Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the creator of what has become one of the world’s most popular blogs.

Even better news for local activists, he’ll be starting up a new Berkeley- or Oakland-based training program for political activists, politicians and others.

A soft-spoken activist with intense eyes, Moulitsas has emerged as perhaps the country’s—and the world’s—preeminent political blogger.

Blogs—short for web log—have become the new medium for political activism, and Moulitsas, a soft-spoken army vet, has created a phenomenon that draws up to a million visitors day to dailykos.com.

New media activism

As an example of the power of blogs, he points to another Berkeley resident, Cindy Sheehan.

“The anti-war protests this year were completely useless,” he said. “The most impactful activism was Cindy Sheehan, and it was the bloggers who promoted her first. She gave the media a hook, a story to tell.”

And the protests which he said did count—the massive marches by immigrants across the country—were heavily promoted on the Internet.

“These were leaderless rallies, people with flags talking about fighting for their families. You had 80,000 people turn out in Salt Lake City, and principals locking down schools to keep their students from attending. Suddenly the media had a hook. And it didn’t hurt that they were on message,” Moulitsas said.

And now, paired with another blogger with a talent for political activism, he’s invading the turf of one of the oldest of the old media, books.

With fellow blogger Jerome Armstrong of Alexandria, Va.—creator of the MyDD.com blog—Moulitsas has written Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Democracy, a 196-page volume that has garnered serious attention from political leaders and big media.

And for Moulitsas, it even produced a graphic icon—a David Levine caricature in the New York Review of Books.

As unabashed liberal Democrats, the two bloggers see the Internet as a seminal tool in reshaping a Democratic Party that has become so enamored of high-priced consultants and so reluctant to confront the conflicting interest groups that make up the party that the once-powerful political machine has been reduced to a state of near-ineffectiveness.

Party contrasts

“The Democrats have become a minority with absolutely zero input in Washington,” said Moulitsas. “The GOP has no interest in compromising.”

The Republicans haven’t always been implacably hostile to negotiation, he said. “Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, and his party at least would listen and sometimes compromise. But those of us who have come to age politically after 2000 have never seen it.”

And the same goes within the groups that compromise the party establishment, he said. “They still think it’s 1980.”

While both parties represent coalitions of interests, Moulitsas said, the Republicans have been far more effective in wielding them into an effective machine.

“It’s amazing to me how myopic our side is,” he said. “The other side will work in concert with each other because they each know they’ll get their turn and wind up getting 50 to 75 percent of what they want.”

Democratic coalition groups, by contrast, engage each other in all-or-nothing battles.

The solution, he said, lies partly in changing the nature of the dialogue.

“People are willing to overlook their political difference if you talk about values. Bush talked in the language of values, so people were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt,” he said.

Moulitsas said that, for instance, when Bush violated his professed values, as he did in the case of the proposed handover of U.S. port security to a Dubai firm and in the case of his response to Hurricane Katrina, “People started to say, ‘Holy shit! He really doesn’t give a damn about security or about the people in New Orleans.’”

For the next two years, Moulitsas plans to devote himself towards a single goal—helping the Democrats seize control of the political process.

“It took the GOP 30 years to build up their machine, and it will take 10 years to dismantle it,” he said.

East Bay institute

Moulitsas said he’s going to be working over the next year to help build a training institute for activists working in 21st Century online media. “It will be in Berkeley or Oakland, wherever we can find the space.”

The facility will provide training for politicians, activists, organizers and consultants.

“TV and online will become one and the same,” he said, with “blogcast” videos emerging as a new force, and TIVO video recorders set to capture online RSS media feeds starting in the fall.

“We’ll also do some old school media training, and teach how to present yourself on camera,” he said.

They’re even going to train consultants, the group he and Armstrong single out for scorn for their advice to the Democratic establishment.

“My job is to build the infrastructure for a new progressive movement to emerge,” he said. “I’m working to build a vast left-wing conspiracy to match the right’s very powerful political machine.

“I only see myself doing this for the next five years or so, and then I’ll do something completely different. What that may be, I have no clue.”

Road to blogville

Born in Chicago in 1971, where his Greek father and El Salvadoran mother met while attending college, Moulitsas was 4 when his family moved to El Salvador. They returned five years later, during that country’s bloody civil war.

“I’ve seen first hand how politics really can be a matter of life and death,” he said.

When he came back “to lily-white suburban Chicago, I was skinny and short, and I’ve always looked young for my age. I was miserable,” he said.

At 17, he enlisted in the Army: “My parents didn’t have a lot of money, and it was a way of going to college.”

Illinois offered free tuition for veterans, the only state that does.

After a hitch serving as an artillery fire director at the headquarters for a missile battery, he attended Northern Illinois University, winning dual degrees and majoring in philosophy, political science and journalism and minoring in German.

From there, it was on to Boston University, where he earned his law degree.

“I knew in law school that I never wanted to be a lawyer. It was a way to kill three years of my life,” he offered with a smile.

He could have become a reporter—there was a job offer from the Associated Press—and he did freelance for three years for the Chicago Tribune, “but I decided I didn’t want to live vicariously through other people’s lives.”

His memories of El Salvador and a fascination with politics propelled his interests in news. “When I was 9, I forced my parents to get subscriptions to both Chicago papers.”

To the Coast

He moved west to San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood in 1999, and began working for a Latino-themed Internet portal being developed by a web development shop in the city.

After his wife graduated from Boston University in 2000, they moved to Berkeley

“We were paying $1,800 for a studio in SOMA and we realized we could rent a house in Berkeley for a lot less. If we’d stayed in the studio, we would have killed each other,” he said, smiling.

In May 2002 he applied his skills to creating his own blog, today’s Daily Kos.

“It was mostly election stuff and I was writing about the war. I’m always good at staying within my own niche. That’s the great thing about the blog world—anyone can write about anything.”

He left the web development business in 2003, venturing into the world of political consulting.

During the following year, “I worked with [campaign manager] Joe Trippi on the Howard Dean campaign” with his fellow blogger and co-author Armstrong. “We realized we were good at what we did, and we got clients.”

After the Dean campaign ended, he devoted full time to his blog, having become one of the few practitioners of the art who can make a decent living at it.

Early on, blogging threatened to pose marital problems with spouse Elisa. “She hated it, but now she’s blogging too and she’s as addicted as I am.”

With three others, she blogs at mothertalkers.com, writing about motherhood and related issues. Son Ari—short for Aristotle—at two-and-a-half, is still too young to blog, though he’s already bilingual.

A blogger’s day

“I spend most of the day with my laptop grafted to my hip. I get up about 7:30 and check my emails until about 9,” he said—a daily deluge that, after winnowing, amounts to about 400 emails a day.

“By 9, the East Coast bloggers have most of their news up for the day, so I riff off that and blog heavily until about noon, when I get out of bed.”

Afternoons of late have been spent doing media promotions for the book, along with sending email questions to sources.

From 4 to 6 p.m. is family time, after which he tries to work in one or two more blog posts.

Then there are the long days on the road, promoting the book.

It was in the middle of his touring that the family learned of a chance to buy a home at a good price in South Berkeley, and the sale closed earlier this month.

“It was the worst possible time for us, but it was a great deal,” he said. “It’s the kind of house I can see myself staying in for the next 40 years.”

Moulitsas says the one political arena he hasn’t followed closely is the Berkeley municipal scene—something that is changing because of a new development planned not far from his home at the Ashby BART station—a project that has raised his concern.

City councilmbers Tuesday approved transferring the Oxford Plaza parking lot to developers Tuesday night, but their vote—the first of two—left as many questions as answers.

On a 6-1-2 vote, with Betty Olds voting no and Gordon Wozniak and Laurie Capitelli abstaining, the council voted to approve the $62 million project for the site of the city’s current Oxford Plaza parking lot.

In its place, if all goes as currently planned, will rise the David Brower Center, touted as an international showcase of environmental organizations, and Oxford Plaza apartments, 97 units, half of them with two or three bedrooms—all reserved for those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to live in Berkeley.

Capitelli had the most questions—26 that he’d emailed to Housing Director Steve Barton—but Wozniak had several as well, while Olds already had the answers she needed.

The project is complex, reflected in the 333 pages of paperwork that constitute the Disposition and Development Agreement that accompanied the 25-page staff report and four pages of resolutions.

That agreement, as Capitelli pointed out, could well change as the project moves forward, since it includes a provision vesting City Manager Phil Kamlarz with the power to change it in whatever way he sees fit.

While Capitelli proposed amending the ordinance right then to include controls mandating council review of significant changes and Councilmember Kriss Worthington wanted an amendment requiring quarterly reports to council, Mayor Tom Bates closed the discussion and forced a vote, saying amendments could be added when the measure comes up for a second and final vote at the council’s next session Tuesday night.

“The amazing irony is that this is being built next to the Gaia Building, which is named after something that never came to fruition,” Capitelli said, “and I hope that’s not the case with the David Brower Center.”

The Gaia Building was named after a bookstore, which was scheduled to occupy the two floors of “cultural space” that allowed the builder to add two more floors of apartments. The bookstore went broke before its namesake building was ever completed.

One of the uncertainties never addressed at the council meeting involves whether the David Brower Center, the building planned for the corner of Oxford Street and Allston Way, would actually house non-profit environmental groups.

While the mayor, Barton, project developers and environmental groups all hale the building as—in Barton’s words—“a centerpiece for bringing together environmental organizations in the city of Berkeley,” nothing in agreement says any such thing.

In fact, Barton’s staff report reveals that “the developer has not agreed to limit the use of all the office space” in the center, “but rather insists that, to ensure the financial feasibility of this component of the project, leases may need to go to for-profits.”

Under the worst-case scenario, he wrote, “51 percent of the office space could be leased to government entities with no relationship to the environment and 49 percent could be leased to for-profit entities (with an environmental component to their business).”

Or, as he acknowledged at the Jan. 24 council meeting, the offices might go the University of California, which is embarked on a massive campaign to acquire office space in downtown Berkeley.

John Clawson, the founding principal of Equity Community Builders, the San Francisco firm hired to handle the development, said he had letters of intent for 70 percent of the space in the Brower Center, and interest from others “that could fill the remaining space three or four times.”

The university could be a major source of tenants for the 97 housing units to be built in the affordable housing complex that will front along Oxford between Allston and Kittredge Street.

“The need for affordable housing is indisputable,” said Carolyn Bookhart, project manager for Resources for Community Development, which will be operating the housing—reserved for families earning 20 to 30 percent of the area’s median income, with some units for those earning up to 60 percent of that level.

As an example of likely tenants, she cited the 87 percent of UC Berkeley service workers and the 39 percent of university clerical works “who are not paid a sustainable wage—almost 2,000 people working downtown who cannot afford to live here.”

She also cited the “close to 50 different classifications of people working for the city” who aren’t able to afford housing in the town where they work.

Capitelli said he was also concerned that while the proposed agreement said no transfer of the property from the city to the developer could occur until all the needed financing was secured, “there are a couple of indications” in the agreement “that we may have to waive that contingency.”

“We are the deep pockets here,” Capitelli added.

Wozniak said his concern was the Oxford Plaza component.

“We’re losing the parking revenues” during construction from the city’s lot that now occupies the site, and the city is paying the property taxes of about $1.5 million, as well as paying another $445,000 for real estate transfer and oversight costs.

“The cost per unit of housing is $350,000, and yet we’re calling it affordable. That’s just too expensive,” he said.

Wozniak said he was also alarmed that the so-called “soft” costs of the project—money not involved in actual construction or land purchase—amount to one third of total project costs,.

“We’re giving away a lot that we’re going to live to regret and we’re going to ruin the downtown, and I’m glad that’s not going to be my legacy, because I’m going to vote no,” said Olds, the lone no voter.

By the time the item surfaced on the agenda, midnight was in sight and many would-be speakers had left, including members of the family of the late environmentalist for whom the project is named, the late and Berkeley-born David Brower.

“This is very exciting to me,” said Linda Maio, one of the council majority, praising “a very bold and important project” that will be “markedly wonderful for the downtown.”

Of the $62 million in projected costs, about half would come from commercial lending sources and half from government funds and tax credit programs earmarked for housing. That total includes $2.5 million from the city’s Housing Trust Fund and another $1.54 million in city redevelopment funds.

Depending on whom you talk to and how you read between the lines, this Saturday’s Berkeley Progressive Coalition Convention will pull together a coalition of old and new progressive organizations in the city—including members of the longtime Berkeley Citizens Alliance and the year-old Berkeley Progressive Alliance—strengthening all of them. Or else it is a movement by the BPA to supplant the BCA that could potentially lead to a split in Berkeley’s progressive movement and establish competing progressive candidate endorsements for the fall elections.

The first session of the progressive convention is scheduled to be held this Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Hall. It is designed to be a two-part process with Saturday’s session setting out a progressive platform and a later session inviting local candidates for possible endorsements.

The convention has been organized in two separate sessions in part because local nonprofit organizations, that wanted to be part of the platform-writing work, were prevented by tax-exemption laws from participating in the political endorsement activities.

Part of the confusion as to whether the progressive convention is a distinct entity from the BPA, and not simply an auxiliary, is that both are most closely associated publicly with local progressive activist Laurence Schechtman, and the convention is a direct spinoff of the BPA.

In a Daily Planet commentary last September that announced BPA’s second meeting and outlined the group’s mission, Schechtman was already talking at length about the need for a progressive convention, tying it directly to the BPA.

“In the 1970s and most of the ’80s [Berkeley] had conventions which attracted up to 600 people,” Schechtman wrote. “We wrote lengthy platforms. And the candidates we elected usually stayed true to progressive principles . . . If we can host a coalition convention that will draw 500-600 people who will then stay active in holding our candidates true to their word, we can again become a national model.”

In a telephone interview this week, Schechtman said that the convention was spun-out of the BPA last January partly because of a conflict of interest involving former Planning Commission chair Zelda Bronstein.

“Zelda was on the BPA coordinating committee, and the organization became closely identified with her,” Schechtman said.

The conflict occurred between an endorsement convention and Bronstein’s plans to run for mayor of Berkeley against incumbent Tom Bates.

“If you’re going to be an honest broker, that can’t be,” Schechtman explained, “so the BPA voted to form a second organization.”

Even though several BPA members are closely associated with the progressive convention, Schechtman says that Bronstein is not, adding that “now it’s two different bodies. No one group dominates.”

Closely associated or not, Bronstein was working with the convention at its onset. She was among some 25 Berkeley activists—including Councilmembers Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington—who met at the Downtown Berkeley Library in February to plan the convention.

And some of the convention activists are not BPA members.

Councilmember Dona Spring, who convened the February convention planning meeting, said that while she “thought the idea [of the BPA] was good,” she said that she has “never been to any of the meetings.”

Spring said that she felt the convention was necessary because “progressives in Berkeley have become rather rudderless. There has been a vacuum for a least the last half-decade.”

She attributed that in part to past success.

“As late as 1988, the BCA produced a progressive platform that [then] Mayor Loni Hancock endorsed,” Spring said. But after progressive majorities were elected to Berkeley City Council “it was kind of like people thought they didn’t have to organize any more. Progressives thought all they had to do was just tell [councilmembers] what to do, and they’d do it. But it doesn’t necessarily work that way.”

But Spring said that progressive political activism has resurfaced because “many progressives do not feel they are represented by Mayor Tom Bates.”

It was Spring who convened the progressive convention four years ago that encouraged Bates to enter the race against then-mayor Shirley Dean. Spring now calls that “kind of a shotgun wedding. He was probably the only person who could beat Dean, but at the time we didn’t question enough why. His positions on local issues were not well known at the time, and they later came as something of a surprise.”

Meanwhile, just under the surface, the rivalry between the BCA and the BPA smolders, even though representatives on both sides try to downplay it.

“It feels like the BCA has been shrinking, without a lot of energy to it,” said Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS) staff member Michael Diehl, who is working on some of the convention platforms. Prior to the formation of BPA, Diehl said that “there were some thoughts of trying to revive BCA and go through them. But a lot of progressives have gotten alienated from the organization. For a lot of the young people, BCA doesn’t mean much to them. And if progressives want to advance, they have to reach out to the youth.”

Diehl said he believed the goals of the convention was “to try to do what BCA was doing originally.”

In his commentary, Schechtman made a thinly-veiled dig at the BCA, staying that Berkeley government “fail[ed] to enact the ideals of its people . . . mainly because we have allowed our progressive coalition . . . to decay and fall apart.”

And he said that after the convention was over “later we’ll talk about some community organizing ideas of the Berkeley Progressive Alliance.”

Asked in a telephone interview this week if that “decay and fall apart” comment referred to the BCA, Schechtman said that the BCA “used to be that greater coalition, and it isn’t now.”

He called the BCA an organization “in serious disrepair.”

That the progressive convention and the progressive alliance was virtually one and the same was the impression of members of the BCA steering committee when they were presented with the idea of the convention earlier this year, leading to the BCA steering committee declining to officially endorse the convention.

“Our impression is that it was the same group putting together both,” BCA secretary Judy Ann Alberti said in a telephone interview.

“So when the steering committee looked at it, they didn’t feel like they were looking at two separate things. The people who came to present the convention plan to us said that was why they were setting up the Progressive Alliance, so they could have these conventions.”

In the end, while failing to endorse the convention, “is not discouraging people from our organization from going and participating,” according to Alberti. “Our feeling is that it’s great. We hope that they come up with candidates that the BCA will also see as progressives, so that both groups can endorse them.”

But asked what might happen if the BCA and the Progressive Convention end up endorsing different candidates in the November election, Alberti said, “That’s always a potential.”

Other activists hope that doesn’t happen.

Both Councilmember Worthington in the February convention organizing meeting and Schechtman in his telephone interview referred to the progressive division in the District 8 City Council meeting, in which moderate Gordon Wozniak beat out three progressive challengers.

“I think one of the key reasons to have a convention is to have a candidate to pull people together into a District 8 coalition,” the Daily Cal newspaper quoted Worthington as saying at the February convention.

“Progressives have lost a lot of elections because they were not united,” Schechtman said, citing the Wozniak victory and stating that “the BCA did not prevent that.” Schechtman said that rather than splitting their vote between several progressive candidates, “we should decide on only one progressive for each office.”

Former District 5 City Council candidate Jesse Townley is working on the convention, and is a member of the BPA. But he’s also a BCA member.

Townley called the BCA “more establishment progressives; they can bring in more well-known figures to do major speaking events. They have the name and the history.”

The BPA, on the other hand, he said, “has its feet on the ground more. We’re knocking on doors. It’s helping groups focus more on grassroots work. We’re bringing in people who were never BCA members, or even know what those initials stand for.”

And despite the fact that the BCA has turned down the convention’s request for an endorsement, Schechtman says “I won’t say the matter is entirely closed. It depends on how many groups we can get involved in the convention. If it snowballs, then they’ll come in.”

South Berkeley neighbors sparred verbally at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, most supporting Black and White Liquor store owner Sucha Banger in his quest to overturn the Zoning Adjustments Board vote to designate his store a “public nuisance” and impose restrictions, such as hours of operation, on the establishment.

Voting 8-1, with Councilmember Kriss Worthington in opposition, the City Council majority supported the position of a smaller group of neighbors present at the meeting to testify in favor of the nuisance designation and its restrictions.

Based on the council vote, the city attorney will prepare formal findings intended to show that the store is a public nuisance and the council will vote to affirm the findings, possibly next week. And as a result of the designation, Banger’s attorney Richard Warren told the Daily Planet he intends to sue the city.

Problems at the store came to light after a July 2005 arson fire that forced temporary closure of Banger’s store. When a liquor store is closed more than 15 days, the owner must provisionally surrender his liquor license to the state, then reapply to reinstate it. When Banger reapplied, however, a number of problems came to light, including the purchase for resale of stolen alcohol by an employee and neighbors’ complaints of nuisance and criminal activities created by the presence of the store.

When the fire caused the store to shut down temporarily, “the community realized that without his ability to sell liquor, the quality of life increased and they wanted that better quality of life to continue,” said Gregory Daniel, a Planning Department supervisor of code enforcement, who testified at the council hearing.

But Jackie DeBose, who lives in the neighborhood, claimed the fight against the store was not simply about stopping nuisance activities.

“It’s all about gentrification,” she said. “People are more concerned about property values.”

And Marian Jones, who owns two nearby shops said, especially when she worked late, she was grateful for Black and White Liquor. “I feel protected by the presence of the store,” she said.

Neighbor David Arnold, who had objected to nuisance activities around the store, conceded that it changed after the fire and that it was “peaceful, pleasant.”

But things “changed under pressure,” he said. “My fear is that if the conditions [imposed] are diminished, it would revert” to previous nuisance activities.

Councilmember Max Anderson, in whose district the store sits, underscored improvements were due only to enforce efforts of the city to regulate the store and called Black and White “a problem the city has to eliminate.”

Banger’s attorney agreed that after the fire the storeowner had put in security cameras and better lighting. “Since the store reopened, the problems have gone away,” he said. “They no longer exist.”

He said his client would agree to the city-mandated restrictions, but argued that if the business were deemed a “public nuisance,” the Alcohol Beverage Control bureau might shut the business down. “We can give you what you want,” he said.

Worthington said he voted to oppose the designation because it seemed that evidence showed that the store might have once been a problem, but that it currently it was not. He questioned whether it was “proper to question someone [whose store] used to be a nuisance.”

A nascent plan to develop open space in the El Cerrito Hills is eliciting protests from neighbors who say the city’s natural land must be preserved.

Residents are marshalling forces to prevent the sale of an undeveloped 15-acre expanse to an Emeryville buyer who is reportedly working with developer Aaron Vitale. Vitale, opponents say, wants to construct 20 to 30 luxury homes at the site, a steep, grassy area replete with vegetation and native wildlife. Vitale did not return multiple calls for comment.

The private property, called the Willis Parcel (after Orinda owner Ralph Willis), comes with a $3 million price tag, residents say. Buyer Anne Koenig is in escrow for the site, though neighbors say she is still seeking investors. Koenig declined to speak to the Daily Planet about the project, saying only, “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” before hanging up.

Residents of the newly formed community group El Cerrito Hillside Organization (ECHO) insist the Willis Parcel is the largest remaining unprotected open space in the El Cerrito hills. Natural features include creeks, native oaks, deer, owls and, until recently, coyote dens. The parcel borders the Hillside Natural Area, a 79.3-acre, city-designated stretch of undeveloped land.

“We are opposed to any development on this land,” said Norman LaForce, former El Cerrito mayor and current chair of the Sierra Club’s West Contra Costa group, in a prepared statement. “We can’t afford to lose these last remaining acres of native oak woodland and riparian habitat.”

Opposition, though, is not entirely to preserve natural ecosystems. Vitale’s portfolio as a developer includes luxury homes of McMansion proportions, and some fear his structures won’t jibe with other homes in the neighborhood.

“They’re huge, really out of scale for the area,” said Lori Dair, ECHO member and El Cerrito hills resident for 12 years. “That’s what [residents] are really worried about, not to just mention the aesthetic.”

Neighbors guess the parcel has remained undeveloped because a quarter to a third is designated as a slide zone. Steep slopes, combined with fill soil and landslide debris make development tricky, if not impossible, they say.

Berkeley-based geotechnical engineering consultant Alan Kropp, who was hired by Koenig to conduct a preliminary study, agrees portions of the property are unstable but that about 50 percent is on solid ground and ripe for development.

ECHO member Rob Frankenburg, a resident of the hills for seven years, doesn’t buy it.

“Big developers will come in, develop the land, leave the homeowners behind, and they’ll be subject to unsafe land,” he said.

A past attempt to develop the Willis parcel proved unsuccessful. According to El Cerrito Planning Manager Jennifer Carman, the city rejected a developer’s proposal to erect an apartment complex, though it was not due to land instability. The site wasn’t zoned for the project, she said.

Residents insist other proposed projects have failed, because the terrain is so difficult to navigate. Records are sparce, however, and Willis, who has owned the property since 1977, could not be reached to comment.

At present, the city can do little to heed citizens’ concerns. If the sale is finalized, developers must submit a project proposal before commencing the city’s approval process, which would include rigorous environmental review and public scrutiny.

ECHO members hope it doesn’t go that far.

“We’re trying to discourage developers from spending the money because there is going to be opposition,” Frankenburg said. “We want the opposition to be there upfront, so they know what they’re getting into.”

Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) plans to file suit against the West Berkeley steel foundry 60 days from May 5 for violating the Clean Air Act, federal legislation enacted in 1990 that sets limits on air pollution.

The lawsuit, to go before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses Pacific Steel of exceeding emissions limits and failing to adequately report its activities. According to a notice of intent to file suit, CBE intends to sue for each violation from 2002 to the present. Future breaches may also be included, because the plant continues to emit pollutants at higher levels than what’s permitted, the notice says.

“Our main goal here is to force Pacific Steel to comply with the law,” said Adrienne Bloch, senior attorney for CBE. “[West] Berkeley is primarily a community of color, there are a lot of schools, daycares and homes for the elderly. People there are constantly exposed to toxins. ... We want to make sure that Pacific Steel acts like a responsible neighbor.”

Under the Clean Air Act, Pacific Steel could owe as much as $37,500 per violation in civil penalties, though it is not known exactly how many violations the company will be held to, said a staff attorney with the Golden Gate University School of Law Environmental Law and Justice Clinic, the firm representing CBE. CBE may also sue to recoup legal costs and other fees.

Pacific Steel has the opportunity to correct the problems between now and July 5, Bloch said. Veteran environmental activist L A Wood says that isn’t likely.

“I believe Pacific Steel still feels they’re very insulated from the recording process,” said Wood, who approached the law clinic several years ago about Pacific Steel and facilitated the current lawsuit. “I think they’ll kick and scratch … but I don’t think Pacific Steel is going to meet the demands of the attorneys.”

Pacific Steel spokesperson Elisabeth Jewel, of Aroner, Jewel and Ellis Partners, declined to answer questions about the lawsuit; however, she released the following statement: “The company is evaluating the claims made in this notice to sue and looks forward to responding.”

Located on Second Street in West Berkeley, Pacific Steel produces steel parts up to 7,000 pounds, and is the third largest plant of its kind in the country.

It has also been the subject of neighborhood complaints for more than two decades. Residents claim the foundry releases a noxious “burning pot handle” odor and some say it poses a health risk. The plant is known to release hazardous pollutants such as phenols, benzene, formaldehyde and manganese, but whether they occur in dangerous amounts is not known. A health review assessment is due out in June.

A sharp rise in production in recent years, in conjunction with the lifting of an odor abatement order in 2000, has exacerbated odor problems. Registered complaints to the environmental regulatory agency the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) grew from 18 in 2001 to 533 in 2005.

In December, BAAQMD reached a settlement agreement with Pacific Steel detailing measures the foundry must take to come into compliance with environmental regulations, including the construction of a $2 million carbon-abatement filter system. Pacific Steel was also forced to pay $17,500 in fines for nine emissions violations. But many residents felt the agreement was insufficient, and they demanded further action.

An environmental group formed in February, threatening to take Pacific Steel to small claims court. Infighting stalled the suit’s progress, and plaintiffs, each eligible for as much as $7,500 in damages, have yet to file suit. The litigation is unrelated to the federal case.

Some believe BAAQMD will take exception to the CBE action, because going to the courts could simply interfere with measures already underway to curb the company’s emissions. Several high-level BAAQMD officials did not return the Daily Planet’s calls for comment.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, a recent appointee to the BAAQMD Board of Directors, said he is committed to making sure the facility is clean and safe, though he doesn’t know if going to the courts in the way to do it. On Wednesday, he said he was not familiar with the federal case.

Councilmember Linda Maio, who represents District 1, where Pacific Steel is located, said she was receptive to CBE’s action.

“What I’m interested in is continuing to get Pacific Steel to cut down on emissions we can smell and emissions we can’t smell that are dangerous,” she said. “I’m interested in studying what CBE is doing toward that end, and getting Pacific Steel to the table faster. So if this is what will do it, fine.”

The latest Democrats to cancel speaking events at a UC Berkeley event are Al Gore and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

The former vice president canceled a talk he was supposed to give on Tuesday on global warming at a China-U.S. Climate Change Forum, which was being organized by Peking University and UC Berkeley. Members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees threatened to picket at the event.

Gore refused to cross picket lines created by university custodians, landscapers and food service workers in an ongoing labor dispute between the university and the union.

Newson joins a growing group of Democratic politicians refusing to cross the picket lines to speak at UC Berkeley graduation events. Picket threats by the workers resulted in Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, State Sen. Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont), and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles), and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) canceling plans to speak at university commencements.

A press release by the UC Berkeley News Center states that “plans for Gore to speak were canceled after a local union threatened to picket the event” but that “the remainder of the climate change program” would be taking place as scheduled on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Foes of the proposed upscale mall planned for Albany’s Golden Gate Fields turned in nearly three times the signatures needed to qualify a November ballot initiative measure that would stop the proposal.

Members of Citizens for the Albany Shoreline (CAS) presented a box containing 445 pages of petitions bearing 2,446 signatures to City Clerk Jacqueline Bucholz Tuesday noon.

That figure is nearly three times the 950 signatures needed, or ten percent of the city’s registered voters.

“We actually got 2,800 signatures, but we eliminated any that might raise any questions,” said Robert Cheasty, a former Albany mayor and CAS chair emeritus.

“I will look after these like my first-born child,” quipped Bucholz, who said Contra Costa County officials have 30 working days to verify signatures.

The Albany Shoreline Protection Initiative is designed to thwart the mall proposal by Canadian-owned Magna Entertainment Corp., owner of the track, and Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso’s Caruso Affiliated, Inc.

Caruso, a prominent figure among Republican supporters and a major fund-raiser and donor for George W. Bush, has been applying his political skills in Albany, meeting with voters and donating to politically connected groups like the Albany Education Foundation.

Asked for his firm’s response to the filing, Matt Middlebrook, who is coordinating events in Albany for Caruso, said the measure would “impose an unfunded $1.5 million mandate on the citizens of Albany” in the form of costs for the environmental impact report required by the initiative.

“What services will they have to cut to pay for the EIR?” Middlebrook asked. “The city doesn’t have enough money to repair the storm water drain system and they are having to pass a parcel tax to extend library hours. We are confident the citizens of Albany will be able to see through and reject this blatant effort.”

Costs for a similar report on the mall project would be paid for by the developers, he said.

“I’m not surprised the developer is unhappy with the fact that the citizens don’t seem to support his plan,” said Cheasty.

He said he expected EIR costs would be considerably less than Middlebrook’s estimate because the document would focus only on the plan created by the task force mandated in the initiative.

Cheasty said costs could also be reduced by seeking funds from other sources.

Just before they handed in the petitions, one CAS member, PCM Construction owner Peter Maass, attended a meeting of the developer and a group of local merchants.

“There were 20 to 25 people, of whom four or five consisted of Caruso and his employees,” said Maass. “They’ve learned enough about Albany that they show up now with their ties off.”

Caruso and Magna have teamed up to build malls at two of Magna’s tracks in California, Golden Gate Fields on the Bay and Santa Anita in the Los Angeles Basin. By the end of March, the firms had spent $3.3 million in promoting the two projects, splitting the costs evenly, according to filings with the Security and Exchange Commission.

With track attendance down and horse racing in decline, Magna Entertainment has been selling off tracks and developing casinos—so-called “racinos”—at tracks in states where gambling is legal.

Magna is believed to have been behind the telephone survey conducted a year-and-a-half ago asking if Albany voters would support a casino if its operators provided scholarships for all Albany and Berkeley High School graduates.

Caruso is perhaps the country’s most successful mall developer, and his up-scale open-air projects, typically built with housing above the stores, have proven to be phenomenal success stories in Southern California.

In Albany, the development team is up against local activists and environmentalists who have long viewed the waterfront as the site for an expansion of the Eastshore State Park. Wearing another of his many hats, Cheasty is also in Citizens for East Shore Parks (CESP).

The CAS initiative would bar development along a 600-foot-deep band along the shoreline, impose a moratorium on any shoreline development and create a public planning process that would end in a plan for the area that would be presented to the voters.

Even if voters defeat the initiative, the developers would face at least one more public vote on their plans.

Any development along the Albany shoreline must be approved by voters, a condition imposed by another initiative, Measure C, which voters passed in 1990.

Caruso has deep pockets, and has shown a willingness to spend heavily on election campaigns involving his projects. He spent a reported $1.85 million on direct mail and other costs on an initiative campaign to build a mall in Glendale, which was contested by the owners of an existing mall.

Peter Sussman, noted journalist and editor, often described as a 35-year Berkeley resident, was shocked when he looked at his sample ballot and discovered he was slated to vote across the border in Oakland.

The border for Sussman is actually close to somewhere between his living room and his kitchen. One hundred and three of his nearest neighbors also straddle two cities.

“My kids went to Berkeley schools,” he said, aghast that the change could have been made administratively. “There was no warning, no public hearing—they just did it.”

Living between two cities has often brought bureaucratic headaches, especially when it’s time to pay property taxes. The taxes, often fraught with error, are split between Berkeley and Oakland; every year multiple phone calls to straighten out overcharges are required, Sussman said.

As close as anyone can figure out, the administrative change in jurisdiction happened because of a parking permit question, with a bureaucrat from Berkeley public works calling the registrar of voters to make sure the residents on the south side of Woolsey belonged to Oakland.

Not shy, Sussman called every public official he could—Councilmember Kriss Worthington, County Supervisor Keith Carson, Assemblymember Loni Hancock.

He found that the law gives homeowners with parcels split between jurisdictions the right to decide where they will vote.

“It was illegal to remove them from Berkeley,” said Worthington, who spent hours addressing the issue.

Worthington said the problem was resolved and a letter will be sent to residents in the next few days correcting the error.

“We got the 103 voters back,” he said, affirming his membership in what he called the Woolsey Street Voters’ Liberation Front.

When classes commence this fall, students at 2701 Martin Luther King Jr. Way will be the first to navigate the multiple pathways of Berkeley Technology Academy.

The school, in its existing form as the Alternative High School, has earned a bad rap for low test scores, poor attendance and truancy, among other problems. Administrators and school officials hope a new continuation model that offers students three avenues for earning high school diplomas will help turn the school around.

On Wednesday, the Board of Education unanimously approved a proposal to revamp the school, put forth by Alternative High School Principal Victor Diaz, in conjunction with district administration.

The Alternative High School was a continuation school in the past, but in 2000-2001, as an attempt to diminish negative associations with continuation programs, the Board of Education formed the general alternative school, which students could attend voluntarily.

The experiment was short-lived. Last year, a legal settlement between BUSD and a group of students who accused the district of organizing involuntary student transfers forced the district to revisit its need for a continuation program. B-Tech, as administrators are calling it, is the result of that settlement—with a few perks thrown in for good measure.

The school prepares 10th- to 12th-grade students for graduation via college preparatory courses, vocational training or independent study. The new program will feature a 15-to-1 student to teacher ratio, additional hires—a work experience coordinator and a second school safety officer—in addition to community partnerships with organizations like Berkeley City (Vista) College, the Black Ministerial Alliance, InnerWorks and Project ECHO.

Students who don’t fit in elsewhere in the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) because of truant behavior, academic performance or other reasons may be sent to the school involuntarily.

District administration, school board directors and parents at Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting lauded the reform.

“I’m for the proposal,” said Nancy Williams, whose child attends the alternative school. “It’s not fair for [students] to be in a class where they aren’t challenged. These programs the principal is proposing are programs that are helping students succeed.”

Tenth-grade alternative school student Keneishia Lewis shares those high hopes.

“I think it’s wonderful,” she said Thursday. “It will help us prepare for life.”

Some residents, like Laura Menard who lives near the school site, also back B-Tech. It’s an “improvement for youth education and safety,” she said.

But not everyone supports B-Tech unconditionally, particularly staff members who learned about the overhaul late in the game and aren’t sure proposed reforms can solve the school’s problems.

B-Tech will only work if the principal tightens up discipline, said English teacher Kadhir Raja who, along with one of his students, devised the nickname “Hotel Berkeley” for the alternative school, because students come and go as they please.

B-Tech would be “cool,” Raja said, “as long as [Diaz] is more strict and more structured.”

Raja, a first year teacher, doesn’t know if he’ll come back to the school next year. Diaz expects that just four of the school’s 10 teachers are returning.

Other staff members have concerns with implementation. Teachers received copies of the new proposal a day before the Board of Education was scheduled to act on it May 3. (The board delayed that action until Wednesday.) Still, just weeks before school gets out for summer recess, staff members have yet to discuss the restructuring process, said English teacher Andrea Pritchett.

Some students are also in the dark. When the Daily Planet visited Thursday, a class of about eight ninth- and 10th-graders were unaware that their school’s name and curriculum were changing. Eleventh-grade student Kionna Lemott, who participates in student leadership, said seniors weighed in on the proposal, but underclassmen did not.

“I don’t like it, because this school’s been this way for hecka’ long and they didn’t even get our input,” said Lemott. “They still haven’t talked to us about it.”

She admitted, though, that if the changes are as sweet as administrators say, B-Tech could be a good thing.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” said school board President Terry Doran at Wednesday’s school board meeting. “It’s not a panacea. As long as we can remain flexible and talk to each other, that’s really the atmosphere we need to improve the school.”

In other news Wednesday:

The board unanimously passed a resolution supporting Proposition 82, the state Preschool for All Initiative.

Board directors approved an extra $100,000 for an environmental impact report for an East Campus/ Derby Street playing field, with Director John Selawsky opposing. The review will look at the environmental effects of closing Derby Street and leaving it open.

Directors fleshed out details for how funding should be distributed in a renewed school parcel tax measure, which would provide the school district with $19 million a year for 10 years. They are scheduled to vote on recommendations May 24.

The question of condominium conversion, one of some 50 items on the City Council agenda Tuesday night, was significant, not so much for the council vote, but for what modifications the ordinance might face in the future.

Condo conversion

The council decision—approved unanimously—simply continues an ordinance that had lapsed. The vote, however, included a mandate to revisit the issue in September, a question of particular note since members of the Berkeley Property Owners Association are beginning to petition for a ballot measure which could increase the number of permitted conversions.

The approved ordinance caps the number of permitted conversions at 100 units per year. A fee for the conversion is 12.5 percent of the sale price for owners who have occupied a unit in the building for less than seven years. Owners who have lived in the building seven years or more pay a fee of 5 percent of the cost of the converted unit. Fees are put into the Housing Trust Fund, intended to replace lost rental units.

Counilmember Max Anderson, formerly a member of the Rent Stabilization Board, argued for higher fees, but voted with the majority.

“I believe a 15 percent rate is more appropriate,” he said.

Housing Director Steve Barton told the council that 55 units have been selected for conversion this year.

“We have 120 units waiting for the next round,” he said.

While Councilmember Kriss Worthington argued that condo affordability to the middle class was “rhetoric,” with condos selling for as much as $400,000 in Berkeley, Councilmember Laurie Capitelli said he had done the math and that, with tax deductions for interest paid, a condominium owner might end up paying less per month than a renter.

Budget in balance

While the City Council won’t vote to approve the $293 million 2006-2007 budget until June 27, councilmembers heard good news from City Manager Phil Kamlarz, who outlined a balanced budget. In December, Kamlarz had presented a preliminary budget that was $1.6 million in the red.

But the manager predicted a less rosy future.

“There’s a major uncertainty in the transfer tax and property tax,” Kamlarz said in a press briefing Tuesday morning.

Sales tax is flat and there are concerns that auto dealerships could leave the city, leaving a hole in the city budget. While property taxes and transfer taxes are up, experts such as the UCLA Anderson School predict real estate sales will slow. And the city may be able to collect less in utility taxes, due to pending state and federal legislation and new technology, such as the increasing use of the Internet for phone service.

Still, this year’s income, especially due to transfer taxes, about 1.3 million more than had been expected will allow for some one-time expenditures, such as keeping some parks and planning staff positions funded, giving nonprofits a 3 percent increase, funding disaster preparedness efforts and paying for infrastructure needs such as roads and the storm drain system. The transfer taxes comprise about 10 percent of the city’s $130 million general fund budget.

Council critic Barbara Gilbert, reached by phone on Thursday, said she is “glad the city has a balanced budget, but it’s not doing great for sustainable Berkeley.”

Gilbert pointed to council reserves of only 6 or 7 percent, while other cities in Alameda County have reserves at 13 percent, which she said is prudent. (Similarly, in his budget message to the council, Kamlarz said the council may wish to consider a higher reserve policy.)

Furthermore, Gilbert argues that homeowners pay all the taxes for services.

“UC is not paying; renters are not paying,” she said. And, instead of raising taxes, which must go before the voters, the council is hiking fees. There is a recommended 8 percent increase in refuse fees, she said. All the fees go up automatically, she added.

At the May 23 meeting, the council will look at the budget again, focusing on infrastructure needs.

Union support

In other business, by unanimous vote, the council lifted the boycott on Berkeley Honda, with Councilmember Linda Maio making it known that she would take her Honda there this week. The council lifted the boycott when the employer reversed his position and allowed the return of the union shop.

The council also voted unanimously to support unionization efforts of ABC Security employees who work on contract at the city’s corporation yard. Claiming they are forced to work unpaid overtime, they have filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, according to Service Employees International Union organizer Miya Saida-Chen.

Cops on Bikes and other budget referrals

The council voted to consider in the budget process the restoration of funds for bike cops and community mental health workers on Telegraph Avenue. The item was of special interest, because of the recent announcement that Cody’s on Telegraph would close in July.

“Telegraph is at a pivotal moment,” Al Geyer, founder of Annapurna, told the council during public comment period. “I urge you to pass the proposal.”

This, however, is just a small part of the solution. In a note to the council Geyer called for a number of improvements, including better lighting, ending the concentration of homeless people and those with mental problems in the Telegraph Avenue area and parking after 6 p.m. in the yellow zones.

“If Berkeley wants a vibrant Telegraph Avenue … it should include authentic small businesses such as quirky used book shops, boutiques, food and used CD stores” which he said “have been defining elements of the alternative culture in Berkeley.”

The council also voted to add to the proposed budget partial funding for the warm pool and support for an auto theft reduction plan.

Supported by councilmembers Betty Olds, Laurie Capitelli and Gordon Wozniak, George Beier, 42, has jumped into the proverbial ring, challenging incumbent, nine-year Councilmember Kriss Worthington, 51, for the second time.

Beier received 35 percent of the vote in a 1998 attempt to unseat Worthington, who won 61 percent of the vote.

While he hasn’t served in an elected capacity, the challenger has spent years in public service, having sat on the Zoning Adjustments Board and the Waterfront Commission; he is currently serving on the People’s Park Community Advisory Board and is president of the Willard Neighborhood Association.

“My life is about service,” said Beier, who retired two years ago when he sold a successful software business.

The contrast between Beier and Worthington—who plans June 1 to officially announce a reelection bid—will offer a choice to Berkeley’s majority-renter, half-student district that includes the celebrated, yet underperforming, Telegraph Avenue commercial district.

Crime and People’s Park

Reportedly, sales are down on Telegraph Avenue and panhandlers and disoriented people, highly visible in the area, are often blamed for scaring shoppers and committing crimes.

“We need some radical changes to the status quo,” Beier said.

As member of the People’s Park Advisory Committee, Beier said he would target drug sales in People’s Park: “We should think about putting [security] cameras in People’s Park,” he said, underscoring his belief that addicts commit petty crimes. “If we can put cameras at Ashby and San Pablo [avenues] to stop speeders, we can install cameras in People’s Park to stop drug dealing.”

Asked to comment on the idea, Worthington quipped that the only place for cameras in the park is “putting a camera on the stage to film the many interesting and novel performances in the park.” But “filming the average person in the park is intruding on his rights,” Worthington said.

While Beier said he would push the council to hire more drug enforcement officers, Worthington said it is important not only to hire more police, but to make sure there is cooperation between UC police and Berkeley police.

Addressing the issue starts by restoring cuts made two years ago of two Telegraph Avenue bike cops and a team of social workers for the area, Worthington said. The council voted Tuesday to include the funding in the proposed 2006-2007 budget.

Beyond policing efforts, Beier supports drug treatment and is a board member of the non-profit Options Recovery Services.

“I have compassion for people who are drug addicted,” he said. Worthington is a longtime supporter of needle exchange, which prevents addicts from getting HIV/AIDS as a result of sharing needles, and advocates drug treatment on demand.

Both Beier and Worthington advocate stepped-up use of the park.

“The more people in the park, the safer it will be,” said Beier, who envisages a park café where people who frequent the park would train and work, an idea Beier credits to the park advisory committee. He is also calling for a memorial to the Free Speech Movement.

Worthington said he doesn’t think the café is a bad idea but plans should come from park users.

“Having the university force things on the community is counter-productive,” he said, pointing out that the advisory committee for People’s Park is hand-picked by the university.

“One of the key problems is that the university has demanded unilateral control,” Worthington said. “There used to be a more cooperative approach between the city and the university.”

Worthington said he has helped promote events in the park such as the annual Residential Hall Assembly and chess tournaments.

The area needs stability, Beier said, advocating more long-term area residents that include condominium-owners. As for new construction, buildings height should be constrained. “I’m all for affordable housing, but these buildings are too big,” he said, questioning the bonus height given to developers who provide affordable units.

Telegraph shopping

With the announced demise of Cody’s Books on Telegraph, both candidates are calling for a sharper focus on economic development there. Both support fast-tracking permits so that businesses move quickly into empty spots.

“We need to address the nightmare of Berkeley’s zoning mess,” Worthington said, pointing to the fact that members of the public who wish to speak have to come to the Zoning Adjustments Board meetings at 7 p.m., although action on the issue of interest may take place at midnight.

“That hurts small business,” he said.

Beier says the city should do more to help Telegraph Area promote itself. There’s too much bad press, he said. “It’s still wonderful, vibrant. We don’t need to air our dirty laundry in public,” he said. “We need to control the message.”

Worthington underscored the importance of highly-visible bike cops and social workers on the avenue. “A feeling of safety is important,” he said. Cuts in bike cops and social workers two years ago, a relatively small savings, came at a high cost to the neighborhood, he said.

Similarly, Beier said the goal of his focus on drug enforcement is to encourage shopping on Telegraph.

Asked what citywide issues he would address, Beier said he is more focused on improving District 7 at this time. Given that the Berkeley Property Owners Association has touted him on its website as “in all likelihood the next city council member from this student-heavy district that is crucial to citywide politics,” the Daily Planet asked if Beier supports the BPOA-sponsored condominium measure, now circulating as a petition to go on the November ballot.

“I don’t know enough to speak to it,” he said.

Worthington addressed condominium conversion, saying that facilitating the conversion of 100 units each year to condominiums allows homeownership while not depleting the city’s rental stock. The impact of the BPOA’s proposal to allow some 500 units a year to be converted would hurt renters, Worthington said, adding that the city must find a way to prevent speculators from buying apartment buildings to convert to condominiums.

While Worthington is best known for his progressive role on the council, advancing measures to impeach Bush, fighting for the city’s Living Wage Ordinance and supporting workers on strike, he said what gives him most pleasure as a council person is addressing individual needs.

For example, he is now working on behalf of 103 people whose homes border Oakland and Berkeley, who have suddenly been administratively transferred to Oakland voter status, though they have always voted in Berkeley. He also pointed to his advocacy for a woman overcharged for 12 years on her trash bill.

Through the budget process, Worthington said he’s advocated for affordable housing, protecting nonprofits to “save and strengthen the social safety net,” and increasing the fire department budget.

Implementing programs such as additional police and permit reform will take money, Beier acknowledges. He said he thinks the voters will tax themselves for these services, but first city government needs to show it is can work efficiently.

Wayne S. Dismuke was born Oct. 17, 1941, in El Dorado, Ark., through the union of Horace K. and Doris J. Dismuke. Wayne was the first child of Horace and Doris. He graduated from Berkeley High School in 1959.

After High School, Wayne joined the Naval branch of the Armed Forces and served in the Submarine Division, until he was honorably discharged in 1964.

Wayne was hired in the Berkeley Fire Department on Sept. 11, 1967, and was the top candidate in his recruit class. He promoted through the ranks of Apparatus Operator, Fire Lieutenant and Fire Captain. In November of 1985, Captain Dismuke became the first African-American Fire Training Director of the Berkeley Fire Department.

As the Director of Training, he formed many of the current leaders in the Berkeley Fire Department. He was the initial incident commander in the City of Berkeley, in the 1991 Berkeley/Oakland Hills fire.

As President of the Berkeley Black Firefighters Association, Wayne was dedicated and committed to improving diversity in the fire service and was a leading voice for this cause, organizing demonstrations, and appealing to Fire and City officials to increase employment opportunities in the fire service for African-Americans, women and other minorities.

As a visionary, he advocated for a youth training program and in 2002, the Berkeley Youth Academy was formed, bringing together young people of all ethnicities and genders.

Captain Dismuke was the first recipient of the Berkeley Black Firefighters community service award, recognizing his service to the community and naming the award in his behalf, the Wayne S. Dismuke Community Service Award.

He was the originator of the Berkeley Black Firefighters slogan, “Serving the Community and Not Ourselves,”, which spoke volumes about his character, as did his 36 years of selfless giving and dedication to the Berkeley community.

Aside from the challenges of the fire service Wayne enjoyed traveling, especially taking cruises to the Caribbean and the Bahamas, fine dining and an occasional horse race.

On May 14, 2006, Captain Wayne S. Dismuke was called home. He was preceded in death by his mother, Doris Jean Dismuke and his son, Wayne Lamont Dismuke.

Neighbors of Alta Bates-Summit Medical Center who gathered for the Bateman Mall Restoration meeting at Alta Bates on Wednesday night welcomed the city’s announcement that the grassy area that has lately been the site of the temporary road during construction at the hospital would be restored.

Many of the neighbors had feared the road through the grass would become permanent.

Berkeley’s Associate Traffic Engineer Peter Eakland and Deputy Planning Director Wendy Cosin told the neighbors that the path through the grass would still be used for two-directional emergency access but it would be restricted to fire trucks only. There were no plans of letting it being used by ambulances or police vehicles.

“Our main concern is to put it back in a useful form,” Eakland said. “If we take out the emergency access completely, and there is a fire next week, then it becomes a liability issue. The emergency exit really is for fire and need not be used for anything else.”

Eakland also added that once some kind of consensus was reached more detailed planning could be done on how to allow the vehicles to come onto the grass. There was also talk of putting the sidewalk back. Eakland also said that a “fire truck only” sign would be put up on the spot.

Both residents and city officials agreed that drainage was one of the main concerns and needing further study. Residents were in favor of a covered concrete trench rather than a valley gutter.

Henry Sobel, a resident of Prince Street, said that there was water coming down Dana Street during both rainy and dry seasons. Colby Street resident Marcy McGough brought up the standing water issue in Prince and Dana streets.

“The problem lies in the antiquated dewatering system that pumps out water from below the hospital’s emergency room onto Colby and Prince streets and beyond instead of into a storm drain,” she said. “This creates serious health issues in terms of mosquitoes and other water born diseases.”

Deborah Pitts, Alta Bates spokesperson for the Bateman Mall project, told The Planet that apart from hospital water, the drainage problem was also being created by the presence of a creek in the area.

“We are looking into new drainage methods that would pump the water straight down Ashby,” she said. “However, we can say that the hospital water is not coming from the emergency room.”

Residents at the meeting were also strongly in favor of a detailed study of the drainage problem as they said that the volume and source of the problem could not simply be solved with the help of a trench. Cosin and Eakland both said that the drainage problem would need to be talked over in detail with engineers and the results would then be discussed with a smaller group of neighbors.

The deadline for completing the current construction at Alta Bates which would determine the start of the Bateman Mall restoration project has been postponed from August to October of this year because of the heavy spring rains.

There is no Police Blotter again because the city’s new Community Crime View software has caught a bug.

Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan said the program refuses to accept any new information. As a result, the latest crime reports available online end with May 5.

In adopting the new program, the department abandoned the Daily Bulletins, the day-by-day lists of crimes and accidents the department used to post on line. As a result, the software glitch leaves citizens without a way of keeping tabs on local incidents and leaves reporters without a source for police blotters.

Galvan said the department is working with the software maker to solve the problem. In the interim, the department is exploring the possibility of briefly resurrecting the daily bulletins, he said.

Foes of the proposed upscale mall planned at Albany’s Golden Gate Fields handed in nearly three times the needed signatures needed to qualify a November ballot initiative measure that would stop the proposal.

Members of Citizens for the Albany Shoreline (CAS) presented a box containing 445 pages of petitions bearing 2,445 signatures to City Clerk Jacqueline Bucholz Tuesday at noon.

That figure is nearly three times the 950 signatures needed, or ten percent of the city’s registered voters.

Robert Cheasty, a former Albany mayor and CAS co-chair, said the group collected more than 2,800 signatures, but weeded out any that might be questionable in any way.

Bucholz said Contra Costa County officials have 30 working days to verify signatures.

The joint venture has announced plans to create an upscale open air mall on the parking lot on a site Cheasty and CAS members say should eventually become part of the Eastshore State Park.

Their initiative would bar development along a 600-foot-deep band along the shoreline, impose a moratorium on any shoreline development and create a public planning process that would end in a plan for the area that would be presented to the voters.

Caruso has been a frequent guest at coffees and community gatherings in Richmond, where he has been speaking in support of his project.

Caruso and Magna are also paired in a similar venture at Magna’s track in Santa Anita, and by the end of March, the firms had spent $3.3 million in promoting the two projects.

Any development along the Albany shoreline must be approved by voters, a condition imposed by another initiative, Measure C, which voters passed in 1990.

Measure C would also require another public vote should the developers succeed in defeating the CAS initiative. Under Measure C, all waterfront development must be submitted to the voters.

That vote was followed by a closer 5-4 vote approving a use permit for the project, including a controversial provision to impose a proposed traffic mitigation fee—if and when the city ever approves a proposed ordinance authorizing the fee.

The votes came during a marathon session that lasted until 2:14 a.m., despite the fact that one controversial project had been postponed earlier in the session—a discussion of the design of the massive housing complex at 1885 University Ave., dubbed by one ZAB member as “the Trader Joe building.”

Board members also voted to deny a use permit to allow a Quiznos sandwich shop at 3095 Telegraph Ave. and to approve a new air filtration system for West Berkeley’s Pacific Steel Casting (see related story, page Three).

Traffic issues

While no one rose to say they didn’t want a Berkeley Bowl in West Berkeley, plenty of residents and business owners said they favored both a smaller store and more stringent traffic controls than were laid out in the permit and environmental documents.

Some of the criticism came from administrators and parents of students of the Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley—commonly known as “the French School”—located catercorner from the store on the Ninth Street and Heinz Avenue intersection.

The school concerns focused on the traffic that would be generated by the store, which features an entrance across Heinz from the school.

Neighbors, parents and school officials proposed traffic control measures, including directional closures, roundabouts and other measures they hope will lessen the impact on the neighborhood.

A broader concern is the impact of the store on traffic on the already congested Ashby and San Pablo avenues, which intersect a block from the building site.

One key issue is the source of the new store’s customer base. Store and city officials contend most of the customers will come from within a mile-and-a-half radius of the site. Rob Rees, one of the two consultants hired by the city to prepare the project’s EIR, said repeatedly during questions by ZAB members that the 5,000 to 10,000 housing units in that area would be the primary base.

“It’s equally possible you could get a big regional draw as well,” said ZAB member Dave Blake.

“There’s nothing in the industry to indicate that would happen,” said Rees.

The Berkeley Bowl features an exceptionally wide array of produce and organic foods, and the existing store already draws many customers from Oakland and Emeryville—which Rees acknowledged.

But he insisted only 25 percent of the customers would come from out of the immediate area, the same figures as for the existing store—although the new site is located much closer to the freeway.

The EIR acknowledged that the store will create significant impacts on traffic, and that none of the mitigation measures proposed would reduce the weekend impact on the San Pablo/Ashby intersection to a less-than-significant level.

Size questions

“The problem is that the proposed store is not a neighborhood grocery store but a regional super store,” said mayoral candidate Zelda Bronstein, one of the critics who argued that ZAB should only permit a smaller store than the project proposed by Bowl owner Glen Yasuda.

The 90,970-square-foot project ZAB approved includes two buildings, a 83,900-square-foot market building and a 7,070-square-foot food services building, each 40 feet high. Beneath the larger building will be a 99-space parking lot, with an additional 102-space surface lot north and east of the buildings.

Members of the West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies, including Mary Lou Van Deventer of Urban Ore, argued for a smaller project.

“It’s just too big and it’s going to generate too much traffic,” said Rick Auerbach, who lives a block from the site.

“I oppose the massive size and urge you to scale it down,” said David Levinson, who lives five blocks away. “I don’t believe this particular project is designed for West Berkeley. It’s designed to draw people from Emeryville and Richmond and who knows where else.”

A smaller number of speakers offered unqualified support, including Claudia Kawczynska, who lives a block away.

“I am more than willing to accommodate it, to have such a wonderful and worthwhile project in the neighborhood—a world-class grocery store that has demonstrated community values,” she said.

Big task

“We are asking you to take on a big task,” said Associate Planner Aaron Sage, “to make a decision on this very large environmental document and, if you find it is adequate, to take action on the project itself.”

In the end, it was board member Bob Allen who moved for approval of the EIR, seconded by Rick Judd.

David Blake, Dean Metzger and Andy Katz voted no. Each had criticized the report’s handling of traffic issues.

In approving the use permit—the official document authorizing the project to move forward—the board acted on a document they had only received at the start of the meeting that evening, and which did not include some language added later by city staff for inclusion in the final document, prepared after the meeting.

“I have never seen so many businesses get up and object,” said Judd. “I am not in favor of telling people they have only the choice of accepting the Berkeley Bowl and accepting the traffic impacts we can do nothing about. This project is the biggest traffic generator I’ve seen since I’ve been on this board or that I expect to see.”

Allen said he wasn’t concerned about the traffic impacts on the main thoroughfares, and said that if the project slowed down San Pablo, it would merely stop people from using it as an alternative thoroughfare to get to Emeryville.

It was Tiedemann who came up with a solution of sorts.

Pointing out that the city is currently considering a Transportation Services Fee that would pay for mitigations for traffic caused by new businesses and residential projects, she proposed that the board approve the project, subject to inclusion of the fee if the City Council adopts it before the building permit is issued.

It was Andy Katz who put the notion into a motion, noting that under the measure currently proposed, the fee would amount to a maximum of $1.8 million.

With that added, the motion to issue a use permit passed on a 5-4 vote, with Allen, Raudel Wilson, Jesse Anthony and Dean Metzger opposed—the first three objecting to the inclusion of the fee.

All that remains for project critics is an appeal to the City Council.

Union question

One unexpected revelation threatened to sidetrack the hearing momentarily—the news that the store’s owners wouldn’t consider their union contract binding on employees of the new store.

“We were told the labor issue has not been resolved,” said ZAB member Dave Blake.

”What I’ve been told [is that] it will be up to the employees of the new store,” said Kava Massih, the Berkeley architect who is designing the new store and who appeared as one of the spokespersons for the company.

“The Berkeley Bowl philosophy has always been to allow the employees to make the decision,” said Dan Kataoka, manager of the existing store at 2020 Oregon St., at Shattuck Avenue. “It is not right for the people of this board or people in the audience to impose their will on our employees.”

Kataoka didn’t mention that the National Labor Relations Board had issued an unfair labor practices complaint after an initial 2003 vote to deny the union at Oregon Street. A vote a year later ended with a win for the United Food and Commercial Workers and Butchers Local 120.

“Should [the new store] be non-union, what assurance do we have you won’t close the old store to get rid of the union?” asked Blake, noting that a key traffic study in the new store’s EIR was based on the old store remaining open.

“We will not close it,” said Kataoka. “It will be our core store.”

“It would be a relief to hear that there would be a neutral card check at the new Berkeley Bowl,” said ZAB member Andy Katz, referring to a process by which employers recognize a union if a majority of workers sign cards certifying their desire for a union.

“No.” said Kataoka. “We believe in the democratic process,” that is, holding an election.

The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) is refusing to excuse the absences of teachers who joined nationwide rallies May 1, and is subsequently docking pay.

Many BUSD teachers who missed school to attend the Day Without Immigrants Rally May 1 received letters saying they would not receive wages for that day, because their absences were “not district-sanctioned,” said Patricia Calvert, human resources director of certificated employees.

The letters cite a provision in the teachers’ contract that says employees must make a request to leave in writing 24 hours in advance, for a specific, district-approved reason (protests are not included). Letters were sent out at the site level, though it is not clear whether all schools where teachers reported absent are sending letters.

About 25 teachers from Berkeley High School, four from the Alternative School and 16 teachers and staff from Thousand Oaks Elementary School did not attend school May 1. The district’s spokesperson did not have a districtwide count available by press time.

An average teacher in the school district will be dinged about $285, Calvert said. Teachers may also lose some retirement credits, though they can buy benefits back, she said. Those who don’t pay up will have to work an extra year, because their retirement is based on years of service.

The Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT), the union representing Berkeley teachers, plans to fight the deductions, said BFT President Barry Fike.

“This was teachers taking a personal leave day to go and protest and do something they feel is important to do,” he said. “It’s our opinion that the teachers did not violated the contract, rather the district violated the contract.”

BUSD teacher contract language does not include a provision that allows pay suspension, unless administrators go through a rigorous process that mirrors teacher dismissal, Fike said. A more tenable course of action would have been for the district to send letters of reprimand, he said.

Berkeley High School history teacher Jody Sokolower was shocked when she received her letter.

“I teach a lot of students who are immigrants, and I teach history and I always try to teach students what’s right,” she said. “Most districts supported teachers and students. I really don’t understand why Berkeley isn’t.”

A Berkeley High School vice principal approached Sokolower prior to May 1, and advised her not to walk out. She was told her leave was “not acceptable and there would be consequences,” she said, though she was not offered details.

Ingrid Martinez, a Communication Arts School (CAS) English teacher, was also ambiguously warned by a BHS vice principal. Martinez has not yet received a letter, though she is expecting one soon.

“I’m very, very disappointed that the school and the district couldn’t find a way to support teachers and immigrants,” she said, adding, “I wish they could find a way to make this right. This is not sending the right message.”

Teachers joined more than 2,000 BUSD students who walked out May 1 to protest proposed federal policy aimed at tightening immigration laws. The bill, known as HR 4437, was up for debate in the senate at press time.

Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) plans to file suit against the West Berkeley steel foundry 60 days from May 5 under the Clean Air Act, according to a statement of intent obtained by the Daily Planet Tuesday.

CBE, under the legal tutelage of Golden Gate University School of Law Environmental Law and Justice Clinic, alleges that the steel company has, in several instances, exceeded emissions limits and failed to adequately report breaches.

CBE is filing the lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Under the act, plaintiffs may hold Pacific Steel accountable for civil penalties and legal fees.

Representatives from CBE and Pacific Steel could not be reached for comment.

Pacific Steel, located on Second Street in West Berkeley, has been the subject of neighborhood complaints for more than two decades. Residents claim the foundry releases a noxious “burning pot-handle” odor and some say it poses a health hazard.

In December, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) reached a settlement agreement with Pacific Steel detailing measures the foundry must take to come into compliance with environmental regulations, including the construction of a $2 million filter system. Many residents felt the agreement was insufficient, however, and demanded further action.

A separate small claims lawsuit against Pacific Steel Casting is also in the works, though the litigants, with the help of the Oakland-based nonprofit Neighborhood Solutions, Inc., have not yet filed.

Although former Berkeley Police Sgt. Cary Kent, who pleaded guilty in April to felony charges of grand theft and possession of heroin and methamphetamine was sentenced Friday to one year in county jail, he’ll do no time behind bars.

Friday, Superior Court Judge Don Clay, who said Kent “served the public very well” yet betrayed the public trust, offered the now-retired officer alternative sentencing, such as home detention or work furlough.

Kent and his attorney Harry Stern will be back before the judge June 27 to propose specific sentencing.

Kent stole heroin, meth and pills from the police department evidence locker that he supervised, compromised at least one criminal drug case and caused one case to be dismissed, said Clay, who noted Kent was “very remorseful and accepts responsibility” and was enrolled in a “detox” program so that he could “move on in life.”

Some 900 pages of Berkeley Police Department reports on the case, requested by the Daily Planet on April 17 and released Friday by the department a few hours after Kent’s sentencing, paint a picture of a police department that apparently had great difficulty in acknowledging for more than a year that one of its own, the person responsible for overseeing narcotics evidence, had a serious drug problem.

The reports show that Kent was able to convince colleagues that radical changes in behavior, appearance and work ethic were a result of a medical condition. It also shows that, while at least one commanding officer may have talked to Kent about poor work habits—not showing up on time to distribute drug evidence to officers going to court, missing meetings, not completing his work—no formal disciplinary action seems to have been proposed until he was put on administrative leave Jan. 6, after hard evidence came to light that he had tampered with drug evidence.

The reports also show that some 280 drug envelopes had been tampered with, about 100 more than had previously come to light. These contained mostly heroin and methamphetamine, but also included ecstasy, rock cocaine, vicodin and oxycontine.

Documents released were mostly transcripts of interviews conducted in January and early February by Berkeley Police Department Lt. Cynthia Harris and Inspector Mark Scarlett of the Alameda County District Attorney’s office with 31 police officers, three informants and a private citizen. Interviews with “informants” indicate that Kent continued to buy heroin after his mid-January retirement; informants said they thought Kent was still on the force.

A Jan. 24 interview with Chief Doug Hambleton reveals that the chief, in his post since March 2005, was largely left out of the loop, with officer concerns about Kent’s demeanor and work ethic being raised with him only last fall.

Hambleton told investigators that in October or November “when I discussed [a new rotation in the Special Enforcement Unit where Kent worked] with some other command officers, people brought to my attention that Sergeant Kent, who was in that assignment, has had some illness for a while and they were concerned about whether he would be able to work the street or work some other assignment in the Department if he were to be transferred.”

The chief met with Kent and discussed a possible medical leave beginning mid January to allow him to address medical issues, and told investigators his concern grew just before Thanksgiving, when his staff told him Kent had not completed an annual physical that should have been done during the summer.

“And to me that kind of raised a concern that … we as an organization have a right to know . . . that people are in good shape physically and . . . that’s why we do the annual physicals,” Hambleton said.

At this point, reports indicate the chief was following the issue closely. Speaking of Kent’s failure to go to a December doctor appointment set up by the department—Kent said he had the wrong time—the chief told investigators: “That just . . . struck me as a little odd . . . but it didn’t start raising any red flags at that point.”

Kent finally went to the physical, but refused a blood test. That, “coupled with the fact that he is one who has custody of our narcotics . . . we started getting concerned,” Hambleton told investigators.

From there, the chief asked for a preliminary audit of the drug vault. Officers found a number of articles had been tampered with and that led to Kent’s administrative leave, his retirement and eventually, his guilty plea.

“Had you heard any rumors of any drug use with him?” Harris asked the chief who said he hadn’t.

Yet, others in the organization had long questioned Kent’s dishevelment, his isolation, his sometimes not making sense and his terrible work habits.

Captain Stephanie Fleming was chief among them. Since April or May, she’d noticed Kent had gained a lot of weight, “had that sallow look about him,” and spots on his face.

“. . . he was sweating profusely. He would come rushing into staff meeting on Monday mornings . . . And a lot of times he would not even make it there,” she told investigators. “He would call me and say, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t make it. I had to go down to the lab and pick up some dope for the officers to take to court.’ He always had an excuse.”

Fleming was perhaps the first to look squarely at the possibility that Kent was on drugs, as indicated in the interviews. She mentioned it to colleagues, but apparently did not take her concerns to the chief.

“I asked a couple people; I think I even mentioned it to Capt. Gustafson and even asked Lieutenant Yuen. You know, ‘Do you think the guy’s on drugs?’” she told investigators. It was Fleming, according to interviews, who ultimately got the chief to approve the initial audit of the drug vault.

The commander of the SEU between January and August 2005 was Capt. Eric Gustafson. Gustafson was a personal friend of Kent’s and others in the department. While it appears that some discussion of his personal relationship with Kent was redacted from the reports (there is an entire page of Gustafson’s testimony that was redacted), one gets the picture that Kent socialized with the person who was his subordinate and neighbor.

Gustafson told the inspectors about going away for a weekend with Kent and other BPD officers to baseball training in spring 2004. It was then that Gustafson noticed that Kent stayed in his room when the others went out to activities other than the games.

“It was the first tickle that I thought something might not be right,” he told inspectors.

But he didn’t know what it was.

When Gustafson took over the SEU in January 2005, he saw Kent “coming and going and his hours were flexing all around and he didn’t look good.”

Then Gustafson started to hear that Kent wasn’t there in the morning to give the officers the drug evidence they needed to take to court. He apparently addressed the issue in an informal way, discussing Kent’s performance with him in April 2005, to which Kent responded, according to Gustafson, “‘You’ll never have to ask me again.’”

In May, things weren’t getting better and Gustafson spoke to him again. Gustafson told investigators that by that time Kent was “flatly unreliable,” never being where he was supposed to be and not answering his cell phone.

The record shows that Gustafson stepped in for Kent: “You know even after (the conversation with Kent) I was still handing out dope in the morning and that’s not my job,” Gustafson told investigators.

On July 8, Gustafson sent Kent an e-mail, included in the reports, outlining work duties and a schedule that was to be maintained.

The e-mail offered no consequences for ignoring the captain’s demands, but Gustafson told investigators it was preliminary to “setting the stage for a performance improvement plan.”

Asked whether a previous commander had evaluated Kent, Gustafson said he didn’t know how that had been handled. “Usually those things are done informally person to person where you discuss problems in the unit or problems with people or something like that,” he said.

No performance plan was included in the documentation.

Testimony by many officers showed that Kent continued to come to work at irregular hours—even the middle of the night—and to be absent when his colleagues needed his presence most.

Asked by investigators whether he suspected Kent was using drugs, Gustafson responded: “No, I had no suspicion at all . . . That’s probably ignorance on my part.”

Kent responded to Gustafson’s e-mail by going out to coffee with him and talking about battling the illness, which, in the reports is sometimes called in the documents lupus and sometimes the name is redacted. Gustafson said, at that time, it was clear that Kent was depressed and suggested he get professional help. “He was emotional. He was going in and out of really making good sense and not making such good sense . . .”

Kent told him he was taking medication to fight depression associated with his disease. “And then I told him that I wouldn’t tell anybody because he asked me not to,” Gustafson told investigators, adding that he told Kent he would “Give him some flexibility, but I still needed him to do his job.”

Another individual close to Kent, who did not recognize signs of drug abuse, was Lt. Dennis Ahearn, who described himself to investigators as “a personal friend.” Ahearn told investigators he noticed changes in Kent about 18 months earlier. Kent responded to his concerns by speaking of an undiagnosed medical condition that he didn’t want to talk about. Ahearn said he never suspected Kent of using either prescription or illegal drugs.

As time went on, Kent was looking increasing unkempt and people in his unit talked about his poor work habits. Ahearn said he had conversations with Gustafson and Lt. Ed McBride about it, but they did not conclude he was using drugs until the very end of the process.

“I knew that he was falling down at work and . . . I had just assumed that . . . was being addressed within his chain of command in . . . as far as his missing staff meetings and that kind of stuff,” Ahearn told investigators.

This should have been handled differently, Ahearn said. “All of us I think are a little bit embarrassed that we didn’t push him a little . . . harder earlier or confront him sooner. You know do something like that maybe we could have headed this off or (at) least brought it to light earlier . . .”

McBride was among the few that may have suspected drug use.

“I wouldn’t say addicted,” McBride stated in response to an investigator’s question. “But my concern was where he was working and . . . he has a source if (he) wanted to use it. The longer this went on with no diagnoses (for the supposed medical condition) and his erratic behavior . . . I started to suspect maybe because where he was working that maybe . . . he was using.”

McBride told investigators he expressed his concern to Capt. Gustafson verbally. “I brought it up to a higher . . . person in the chain. So, in my mind . . . things should have been done here. And I don’t think organizationally we did. I think we failed.”

As a retiree returning to work in August 2002, Lt. Russell Lopes observed Kent with fresh eyes. “There’s no question that for the last couple of years . . . he’s markedly different,” he told investigators.

When he was told that Kent was addicted and had been put on leave, he said he was “incredulous.”

“He betrayed his wife, his children . . . his friends and he betrayed the Police Department that I’ve spent 35 years at . . . So my emotions are mixed in that I’m very sad for him,” Lopes said.

The California Superintendent for Public Instruction is close to a decision concerning the disposal of 9.47 acres of midtown properties owned by the Oakland Unified School District.

The properties include the Paul Robeson Administration Building, La Escuelita Elementary, Dewey High School, Met West High School, and the Yuk Yau Child Development Center.

The OUSD administration midtown property is in the middle of some of the hottest pieces of publicly owned real estate in Oakland. It sits next to Lake Merritt Channel, the waterway that connects Lake Merritt with the estuary, which Oakland voters granted money to open up as public land in the 2002 Measure DD bond vote.

An announcement could be made by the OUSD administrator to trustees as early as this week.

Sale or long-term lease of the properties could set off a political firestorm in Oakland, if true. Rumors of the sale of the Robeson Building have circulated throughout Oakland since the 2003 takeover of the Oakland schools by the State of California. That takeover involved a $100 million line of credit to OUSD to balance its budget.

The property disposal concerns properties and adjoining streets between 10th and 12th streets and the Lake Merritt Channel and 4th Avenue, and could involve either the sale or long-term lease of the property.

An official in the office of State Superintendent for Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, who was familiar with the Oakland properties negotiations and who asked not to be identified, confirmed that officials “are down almost to the end” of a process that began with the issuance of a Request For Qualifications And Development Proposals by OUSD in February of 2005.

“There is currently an exchange of documents going back and forth” between state officials and a developer, said the source in the state superintendent’s office, adding that “once it is finalized, there will be an announcement.”

The official would not say if the land would be sold or leased, but said that information would be provided to the public once the negotiations are completed. The official also said that while the state superintendent’s office has been involved in the RFQ/RFP process over the OUSD properties, “Randy [Ward]’s been taking the lead on this.”

OUSD Public Information Officer Alex Katz did not answer telephone calls relating to this story.

Because the Oakland district is being run by the state, control over the potential sale or lease of the properties rests in the hands of the state superintendent.

The Peralta Community College District briefly considered opening up the nearby Peralta administration building and several Laney College properties to private development but later shelved the idea. The City of Oakland recently closed the publicly-owned Kaiser Convention Center on 12th Street across from Lake Merritt, which sits within walking distance of both the Peralta and the OUSD properties, and there is widespread speculation that private developers are interested in that property as well.

Meanwhile, the City of Oakland is currently considering the proposed massive Oak to Ninth housing and retail development project on city-owned land not far from the OUSD properties.

OUSD Board member Gary Yee said by telephone that he was opposed to the distribution of the midtown property while the district was still being run by the state.

“The sale or lease of the property may be a good idea or it may be a bad idea, but it’s an idea which should be decided upon by Oakland citizens,” Yee said.

While Yee has been one of the strongest supporters on the board for a return to local control, he said that “I don’t want return to local control to be an excuse for selling off district property. I’d rather have a state financial trustee for another 20 years and make a good decision on this property.”

Trustee Dan Siegel, who is not running for re-election this year, said that trustees considered several proposals to sell the administrative and midtown properties last year “but none of them made sense. None would generate enough money to cover the costs.”

Trustee Alice Spearman called the proposed sale “a bad idea. I wouldn’t sell all of the property. Maybe I’d sell one parcel, but not Dewey or the administration building. It’s too valuable a property. They’re not going to get their money’s worth.”

Spearman added that “even though we have declining enrollment, the district is going to grow again, and we are going to need more school facilities.”

Asked by telephone if the proposed sale or lease of the midtown properties would be a good idea, OUSD School Board President David Kakashiba said, “The problem is, we don’t know what the proposal is yet. But there will be a fight if provisions for the schools are not included.”

Kakashiba said that with the booming development in the Oak to Ninth, Chinatown, and East Lake areas, “the school district has a professional responsibility to factor in long-range planning for new facility development.”

He said that the midtown OUSD properties are the ideal central location for expansion of new school facilities, even if the administrative facilities are moved elsewhere.

“There has been some talk about moving La Escuelita and the other schools to other properties,” Kakashiba said. “The problem is, where are you going to find more property in that area?”

While some of the school facilities on the midtown properties draw students from around the city, the 700 student La Escuelita is primarily designed as a neighborhood school for the Eastlake area.

Kakashiba was officially notified about the impending announcement late last week, writing board members last Thursday that “Dr. Ward has informed me that he will provide detailed information to the Board of Education early next week regarding disposition of the Second Avenue properties, including the terms and conditions of an executed letter of intent with the selected developer.”

When notification of the proposed announcement was posted on an Oakland parents Yahoo group last week, speculation surfaced over whether any proceeds would go towards paying off the state loan and returning Oakland’s schools to local control.

Rachel Richman, Chief of Staff of California Assemblymember Wilma Chan (D-Oakland), wrote that “The question has been raised [on the list] about whether the OUSD can sell surplus property to pay down the debt. Generally speaking, you can only use the sale or lease . . . of excess school district property for facility use. [But] last year SB 512 was enacted that allows OUSD until June 2007 . . . to pay off its emergency loan—basically it was an extension from when the State bailed out OUSD.”

SB 512 was the Omnibus Education Bill written by the Senate Education Committee. The original OUSD bailout law was written in 2003 by State Senator Don Perata (D-Oakland).

The same official in the state superintendent’s office said that during Perata’s testimony in 2003 in support of that bailout bill “he mentioned about the sale of district property. I got the impression he was presenting that possibility so that the proceeds of the sale could pay down the loan.”

The seven-member Board of Trustees continues to meet regularly and function in an advisory capacity to Ward, but apparently has not been brought in on details about the proposed disposal of the property even though the process is almost at its conclusion.

Trustee Siegel said that while Ward has also promised that he would consult with trustees before a decision was made on a sale or other distribution of school property, “I wouldn’t take that to the bank.”

Trustee Noel Gallo said that in a telephone conversation that “I haven’t seen the bids” from the developers who answered the Request For Proposals. “They won’t share that with us.”

In an email to the Yahoo OUSD parents list this week, trustee Kerry Hamill wrote that “I know it's been said before, but thus far, the board has NOT been included in any conversations about the future of the administrative headquarters. . . . The district secretary told me that the administration may want to discuss the land's status with the board in closed session, but nothing has been scheduled at this point. Seems like a status report on activities which have transpired over the last 15 months on the site ought to be done in public very soon.”

The next trustee meeting was originally scheduled for May 24 but has been rescheduled for May 31 at the request of Ward.

OUSD administrative officials have already been moving forward this spring with plans to move school administrative offices and personnel from the Robeson Building to the site of an OUSD school previously closed, and the administration has also made preliminary inquiries to City of Oakland officials to move trustee meetings to Oakland City Hall.

The Berkeley Daily Planet is going daily again! Yes, you read that right. After three years, readers will now be able to get news flashes every day, as they happen—on the Internet at www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. The Tuesday and Friday print issues will remain the same—“All The News That Fits, We’ll Print” as one wag around here puts it. But we’ll be able to fit even more intriguing information into the Internet edition.

We will also be able to include all of the opinions, both letters and commentary, our readers send, which have lately been overflowing our print capacity. And we’ll be soliciting readers’ reports of breaking news, even small neighborhood happenings like power outages. Last week’s First Person account and picture of the “flying cottage” fire sent in by reader Anthony Cody was our first reader news contribution, on the Web the day it happened and in the next print issue a couple of days later. So check www.berkeleydailyplanet.com often to see what’s been happening in the East Bay.

Zoning Adjustments Board members said no to Quiznos Thursday, and yes to a $2 million air filtering system designed to halt the obnoxious odors emanating from Pacific Steel Casting.

Foes of the sandwich shop turned out in numbers to say that the proposed shop in the new Southside Lofts condo complex on Telegraph Avenue would place an intolerable strain on an already parking-depleted neighborhood.

Quizno’s foes had the advantage over the opponents of the Pacific Steel installation because the sandwich shop appeal was heard early in the evening while the air filter issue didn’t come up for discussion until 1:14 a.m., thanks to a lengthy hearing on the Berkeley Bowl planned for West Berkeley.

Quiznos complaints

Southside Lofts—a just-completed mixed-use development with 10 two-story loft condos above ground floor retail at 3075 Telegraph Ave.—already has one eatery, the Mokka Cafe, and with fast food establishments nearby, neighbors said they feared Quiznos would be the proverbial last straw.

Another food-related tenant has also signed a lease in the building, though Edible Arrangements would be offering ornamental offerings, strictly on a take-out basis, said developer Sam Sorokin.

“Parking has gotten really bad,” said Wenceslas Abeyta, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1962. “Owning a house there is a pain in the neck. I can’t invite guests because the parking is so bad.”

“We didn’t agree to a food court, which is what I’m afraid we’re getting,” said Frank Daar, a neighbor who also served as a ZAB member for six years.

Neighbors said parking is scarce in part because of the presence of Summit Alta Bates Hospital, Whole Foods Market and other fast food eateries in the immediate area.

Gary Bell, the consultant hired by would-be franchisees Etenesh Benti and Bethenu Temesgen, insisted that parking wasn’t a problem and urged the board to waive two of the parking spaces required under city zoning codes.

Three stalls had been reserved for the eatery on site, two fewer than mandated by code. Parking wasn’t the only concern of neighbors, however.

Henry Sobel, a Prince Street resident, said the area is already plagued by trash from the existing eateries, and said he wanted an agreement that the restaurant’s owners would clean up the street one block in either direction along Telegraph.

ZAB member Dave Blake said he wasn’t convinced that customers would use the parking lot spaces assigned to the store because the lot is hidden behind the building and not visible from Telegraph Avenue.

“Whole Foods has started valet parking at peak hours,” he said, “and it’s getting to be as much a problem for short periods as Alta Bates.”

Blake also faulted the city for allowing the building to be created “with minimal amounts of parking” and moved to deny the waiver, which would either force the franchisees to give up their plans or settle for a smaller shop.

Sara Shumer seconded the motion.

The measure passed on a 5-4 vote, with members Bob Allen, Jesse Anthony, Rick Judd and Andy Katz in opposition.

Pacific Steel

ZAB almost didn’t hold a hearing on Pacific Steel Casting Thursday night, voting unanimously at 12:42 a.m. to delay the hearing until May 18 as their session on Berkeley Bowl dragged on.

Minutes later, representatives of the company insisted on being heard, and ZAB rescinded their vote, enabling the hearing to commence at 1:14.

The hearing began with a statement from Tom Mitchell, the energy consultant hired by Pacific Steel Casting (PSC), a firm which has operated in Berkeley for 72 years and currently runs three plants on Second Street.

The firm manufactures steel parts for industrial, construction, military and mining applications.

Neighbors have been complaining about odors for at least the last 30 years, with the most common description offered of the malodorous aroma being “a burnt pot-handle smell.”

The new filtering system ZAB approved Thursday is part of the latest settlement between the company and the San Francisco Bay Area Air Quality Management District (AQMD).

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates was elected to the AQMD’s board the day before the ZAB vote.

Under the agreement approved in December, PCS is to install a carbon filtering system designed to remove the offending particles from the air leaving Plant 3 of the complex. The other two plants already have similar systems.

David and Janice Schroeder, Curtis Street residents who have been at the forefront of the odor battle, weren’t happy with the proposal.

“The information is incomplete and there has been no CEQA process,” said David Schroeder, citing the review process of the California Environmental Quality Act.

Schroeder said the settlement came at a time when “there has been a massive increase” in use of the plant, which will be a supplier of the new Bay Bridge project.

“I urge you not to just shuffle through this at 1:30 in the morning,” he said.

Toni Stein, a Menlo Park consultant with a doctorate in environmental engineering, testified for the neighbors, alleging that the carbon system posed a potential dioxin threat from the element’s interaction with some of the chemical being filtered.

Two AQMD officials—Director of Enforcement Kelly J. Wee and Director of Engineering Brian Bateman—said dioxin wasn’t a threat because the system didn’t operate the high temperatures required to spark the reaction.

At the end of the hearing, the board voted unanimously to approve the system.

Tattoo approval

Despite the fact that members Bob Allen and Dean Metzger declared it another step in the degradation of Telegraph Avenue, ZAB members approved a use permit for a new tattoo parlor on Telegraph Avenue.

“I think we may be seeing a generation gap in the way we are considering this,” said Chair Chris Tiedemann. “Practically everyone I know under the age of 25 either has one or wants one.”

Mark Freitas and Howard Falvery, the owners of Dark Sun Tattoo Company of Vacaville, had applied to operate a new piercing and inking salon at 2599 Telegraph Ave. When the discussion ended, only Allen and Metzger voted no.

The founder of the environmental organization that spearheaded legal threats against Pacific Steel Casting is stepping away from the lawsuit due to infighting with the mediation service, Neighborhood Solutions, though other plaintiffs are still moving forward.

Cleanaircoalition.net Director Willi Paul announced Friday in an e-mail entitled “Goodbye and Best of Luck” that he will leave his post as organizer of the small claims lawsuit against the West Berkeley steel foundry that many neighbors have accused of emitting noxious odors because a dispute with Neighborhood Solutions Executive Director Grace Neufeld was interfering with the legal process.

“We had a difference of opinion about how to handle some of the procedural things,” Paul said Friday. “It came down to Grace versus me, and a difference of style and opinion.”

Neufeld said the Neighborhood Solutions board of directors, comprised of five members, voted to remove Paul from its bill of clients. She declined to discuss further details on the record. So far, no lawsuit has been filed.

The rift between Paul and Neufeld developed primarily over how to deal with the media and the pace of the lawsuit, Paul said.

After sending several demand letters to Pacific Steel, Paul didn’t feel plaintiffs needed to give any more warning before filing suit. Paul also relished maintaining a presence in the media. He repeatedly contacted the Daily Planet with updates and letters to the editor, and logged mentions in the local papers on cleanaircoalition.net.

Neufeld, he said, is “more secretive, guarded” about the media.

“I wouldn’t describe it as secretive,” she said. “I just don’t like when you try your case in the press. I thought it would be damaging to the plaintiffs …When we go to the media, that will be decided by an executive group and not an individual.”

Paul took Pacific Steel activists by storm in February when, as a relative newcomer to West Berkeley, he announced he would file a small claims lawsuit against the company, citing the failure of community members and higher-level officials to compel the foundry to clean up. He marshaled supporters with his ad-hoc organization and website, which advertised that residents could sue Pacific Steel for up to $7,500 for damages.

Paul retained Neighborhood Solutions, an Oakland-based nonprofit that has helped residents file claims against drug houses, blighted properties and other neighborhood nuisances, to facilitate the suit. Almost 20 people signed on, Paul said earlier this month. Neufeld would not confirm or deny the number of plaintiffs.

Many Pacific Steel activists, including City Councilmember Linda Maio, have criticized the court action because it could counteract efforts already underway to clean up pollution. Some expressed concern for a loss of jobs—Pacific Steel hires about 575 union employees—if the foundry is financially ruined by residents’ claims. Paul initially said he hoped to corral 200 litigants, which could have encroached on company coffers by $1.5 million.

Paul, who has said he’s thinking about running for Maio’s seat on City Council, leaves the cause with a heavy heart. “This is akin to a CEO getting kicked out of their own company,” he said.

West Berkeley resident Andrew Galpern, who joined the lawsuit a month ago because he believes it is “a direct and powerful way for residents to get Pacific Steel to clean up their dirty business” does not believe Paul’s absence will affect the other litigants.

“It doesn’t change it at all, we’re still moving forward,” Galpern said in an e-mail.

Cleanaircoalition.net will not pursue activism against Pacific Steel in any official capacity, until Neighborhood Solutions completes its work, Paul said. In the meantime, he will turn his attention to other local environmental work.

Today’s (Tuesday) City Council meeting includes a budget update at 5 p.m., a Redevelopment Agency meeting at 6:30 p.m. and a regular council meeting at 7 p.m.

Condo conversion

The City Council will vote on a proposal reinstating part of a condominium conversion ordinance that lapsed in January. The part of the ordinance which sunsetted caps a conversion fee at 12.5 percent of the sales price when occupants have lived in a unit for less than seven years.

For those where occupants have lived in the unit seven years or more, there continues to be a fee of 5 percent of the salesprice. The fee is paid by the owner of the building that will be converted.

Preceding a vote on the ordinance, the council will hold a workshop session that will address various alternatives to the fee structure that lapsed in January. Among the alternatives offered the council is one that would reduce the 12.5 percent fee by 1 percent for each year a unit has been occupied by the same person. Another alternative is to raise the 12.5 percent cap.

The ordinance is designed to allow conversion to condominiums of 100 rental units each year. The fee goes into the city’s Housing Trust Fund to support affordable housing.

Brower building

Also on the council agenda is a public hearing on the transfer of public land to Oxford Street Development, LLC, followed by a vote on the project, which has been in the works for several years.

The proposed $60 million development is to include the Oxford Plaza with 97 rental units of affordable family and workforce housing, retail space and 41 spaces of parking for residential tenants housed in a six-story building. It will also include a four-story environmental center, the David Brower Center, and will include a below-grade 105-space parking garage.

Black and White Liquor

The Zoning Adjustments Board decided on March 23 that Black and White Liquor, located at 3027 Adeline St., was a public nuisance and imposed conditions on it. The storeowners are appealing those conditions to the City Council. The council will hold a public hearing and decide whether those conditions should be approved.

Among the conditions are restricted hours of operation, a mandate for the owner to be present in the store two days each week, the use of clear plastic bags with the store’s name to package purchases and the requirement of the owner and employees to police all disturbances in the vicinity of the store.

Military leave compensation

The city supplements military wages paid to its employees who are ordered to active military service. The original council resolution took single deployments into consideration, but city staff have been deployed involuntarily two times and continue to be subject to being called up for military service. The council will be asked to approve wage supplements for those deployed multiple times.

Supporting unionization

The council will be asked to support unionization of private non-union security guards who work for the city.

Redevelopment

Appropriate development of the city-owned parcel at 1631 Fifth St. will be the main topic on the Redevelopment Agency’s agenda.

The Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) will hear presentations from 10 departments and organizations on environmental issues germane to the Downtown Area Plan.

Juliet Lamont from Urban Creeks Council and Kirsten Miller for Citizens for a Strawberry Creek Plaza will discuss water quality and Strawberry Creek, which runs through downtown Berkeley. Representatives from the PG&E Energy Center and Build It Green, a nonprofit membership organization that promotes green structures in California, will give a presentation on green buildings and energy efficiency.

Ecology Center Executive Director Martin Bourque, in conjunction with the city’s Office of Energy and Sustainability and the UC Office of Innovation and Technology will talk about waste reduction and supporting green businesses. Finally, Greenbelt Alliance, Livable Berkeley and the Sierra Club will hold a joint presentation on the environmental footprint of downtown Berkeley.

DAPAC will also hear a wrap-up of goings-on from the Technical Advisory Committee meeting, which met in private May 5.

The meeting, the committee’s 10th, takes place Wednesday, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave.

A high school military recruitment notification bill sponsored by two Bay Area Assemblymembers continued to sail through committee last week, with a 5-3 vote in the Assembly Veterans Affairs Committee.

But continued Republican opposition means that the fate of the proposed law will be ultimately in the hands of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The bill could now be voted on by the full Assembly at any time.

Federal law requires that military recruiters be allowed access to high school contact information unless the students or their parents inform the school that they are “opting out” of the recruitment process.

AB 1778, co-sponsored by Assemblymembers Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) and Sally Lieber (D-San Jose), would require that the “opt out” notification be sent to parents each year as a part of the emergency notification form which parents must fill out and send back.

The legislators say that many parents and students are not aware that they have the right to opt out, and more will choose the option if they are better informed.

The bill passed the Veterans Affairs Committee on a party-line vote, just as it did two weeks ago in the Assembly Education Committee, with Democrats supporting the bill and Republicans opposing.

Because Democrats only comprise 60 percent of the state legislature, any bills must gain Republican support in order to survive a potential veto by Governor Schwarzenegger.

The governor’s office has not yet taken a position on the Hancock-Lieber bill.

The Berkeley Board of Education is set to decide whether to ratchet up funding for an environmental analysis of the East Campus Field project Wednesday.

In April, the City Council agreed to share in the cost of an environmental impact report (EIR), which would serve as the framework for developing a sports field at the district-owned site bounded by Martin Luther King Way and Derby, Milvia and Carleton streets.

But because the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) owes the city for municipal services—an invoice that is partially disputed—the “share” will take the form of a trade-off. Accordingly, district staff is asking school board directors to appropriate funds for the entire EIR, estimated at $180,000 to $200,000.

Initially, the board agreed to expend no more than $100,000.

The project could involve the closure of Derby Street to make way for a regulation-sized baseball diamond, an undertaking that would require City Council approval. Berkeley High School’s baseball team does not have access to a standard baseball field within walking distance to campus; players practice at San Pablo Park, on Park Street between Russell and Ward streets.

Debate over how to best utilize East Campus Field, currently a vacant lot, has long divided school and neighborhood communities. Many students, particularly athletes eager for a quality playing field, support the closed-street plan, while residents fear closing Derby Street could have a negative impact on the surrounding neighborhood. A weekly farmers’ market is held on Derby Street.

If the EIR is approved, consultants would study the effects of both closing and leaving open Derby Street. District staff are recommending that LSA, a planning firm with offices on Fifth Street in Berkeley, conduct the review. A public scoping session would take place before the EIR drafting process begins.

Graduation options

In other news, at Wednesday’s regularly scheduled Board of Education meeting directors are scheduled to vote on a new model for the Alternative High School that would allow students to select from three pathways to complete graduation requirements, one a college track, one vocational-based and the third an independent study course. The school would be a classic “continuation” model in the sense that some students attend against their will. The estimated cost of the revamp is $139,000 for staff, paid for through fund redistribution, district staff says.

Parcel taxes

Also on Wednesday, the board will hear revisions to a renewed parcel tax that could go before Berkeley voters in November.

District staff are recommending a renewal of two parcel taxes, the Berkeley Schools Excellence Project (BSEP) and Measure B of 2004, measures that provide BUSD with about $19 million a year. They have been working with district committees, principals, administrators, unions and parent groups to draft the current revised proposal, which would maintain the existing tax rate but would earmark an extra 1 percent, or $230,000, to music and visual and performing arts. Funding for class size reduction would decrease by a corresponding amount.

“Given the hot competition for this money, it’s a good thing,” said Bob Kridle, outgoing chair of the BSEP Music Committee. “It’s a pretty small addition, but it’s something.”

Average class sizes would be 20 in kindergarten through the third grade, 26 in grades four and five and 28 in secondary schools, excluding PE classes. Reduced funding for class sizes was faciliated by recalculating support for special education class sizes, Lawrence said in a correspondence to the board.

Directors are scheduled to vote on the measure May 24.

Preschool initative

Also Wednesday, the board will take a position on Proposition 82, the Preschool for All Initiative, slated to go before California voters this June. The proposition would earmark $2.4 billion a year to provide high quality preschool education for all the state’s 4-year-olds. It is estimated that about 35 percent of California children do not attend preschool.

Under Proposition 82, teachers would be required to hold bachelor’s degrees, and teaching standards would be implemented to ensure accountability. County offices of education would administer the programs locally.

The initiative has earned the support of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, State Superintendent Jack O’Connell, the California Teachers Association, Assemblymember Wilma Chan, Alameda County Office of Education Superintendent Sheila Jordan, the Berkeley City Council and many others.

It has also garnered a fair amount of criticism, particularly from private and nonprofit preschool administrators who fear the program could adversely affect non-public early childhood education institutions. UC Berkeley researchers released a report today that shows one in five directors saying his or her preschool would close if a public school opened a free program nearby. More than half the directors studied disagree with the measure, compared with 35 percent who favor it.

After Thursday’s futile attempts to capture the sea lion that attacked three people at the Berkeley Marina last week, the Marine Mammal Center along with the Office of Enforcement of the Marine Mammal Protection Act decided against any more capture attempts for the time being.

Norm Simmons, special agent from the Office of Enforcement, told the Daily Planet that aversive conditioning would be used for treating the sea lion.

“The fishermen have been asked to spray water on it with a hose whenever it appears anywhere near the fishing boats,” he said. “That’s the best way to distance it from the piers and prevent any further incidents. We are hoping that with the start of the mating season in a couple of weeks, it will leave the marina and go somewhere else or that its behavior will change.”

Simmons also said that might alter the seal’s behavior and that the fishermen were being allowed to do it because they were the ones in close contact with it.

“We hope that this will keep it from posing any other hazard to the public so that euthanizing it can be avoided,” he said.

Simmons said that the Berkeley Marina harbor master Ann Hardinger had closed the pier gates to the public and only fishermen from commercial fishing charters were being allowed in.

A weekend fire brought the city’s total of suspected arsons last week to five, reports Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth. The latest suspicious fire was reported at 10:50 p.m. Saturday at 1910 Sacramento St.

The blaze caused an estimated $10,000 in property damage to a storage area at the site and an additional $3,500 in damage to its contents, said Orth.

“While it’s outside the area of the other four fires, it occurred in the same time frame and was started in a similar manner,” Orth said.

Each of the other blazes was set within a few blocks of the Ashby BART station.

Berkeley Police spokesperson Ed Galvan issued a crime alert Friday, urging area residents to keep doors and windows locked, including those leading to crawl spaces and storage sheds.

He also called on residents to remove all flammable items from their property, including yard waste, and to call police at 981-5900 to report any suspicious activity.

Kitchen fire

A non-arson blaze did $100,000 in structural damage and $25,000 to the contents of an apartment at 1649 Julie St. Saturday morning.

The fire, first reported at 12:42 a.m., began in the kitchen of a downstairs apartment, Orth said. The apartment’s residents, a mother and her baby, were present when the fire broke out, and were alerted to the danger by a smoke detector, Orth said.

The fire was raised to two alarms because of the potential danger to the other occupants of the building, he said.

Housebreaker

When firefighters and paramedics rolled to 1820 Sacramento St. early at 3:35 a.m. Saturday, it wasn’t to fight a fire.

“I thought it was an earthquake,” said Laurie Zabala, who was asleep in the bedroom over the garage when she was rudely awakened. “We woke up, and all we could hear was someone say, ‘Hello? Hello?’

“A neighbor told us they had called police because someone had hit our garage and there was a car inside.”

The vehicle, a Lexus SUV, “was kind of tilted, but there wasn’t anyone there.”

Indeed, the driver had hit and run.

Zabala pointed out that there wasn’t the slightest trace of a skid mark to indicate the driver had slowed before slamming into her stucco-covered bungalow.

“The damage was so severe to the load-bearing wall that the occupants were evacuated and the house was yellow-tagged,” Orth said.

The Lexus demolished the corner post upholding the second story, and the Zabalas won’t even be allowed back upstairs until it’s replaced, Orth said.

A mass panty raid variously described as a “hell raising mob,” an “insurrection,” or a manifestation of “spring fever” swept through the streets around the UC Berkeley campus 50 years ago this week, leaving damage and embarrassment in its wake.

“In two and one half hours about 15 percent of the student body has wiped out a reputation for responsible student leadership which had been built up since the days when Benjamin Ide Wheeler was president,” the Daily Californian editorialized.

“Panty raiding” was a 1950s fad in which male students, often gathering spontaneously, would march to residences of women students, demanding, and sometimes entering and stealing, undergarments.

An October 1952 incident at the University of Michigan seems to be considered the first major collegiate panty raid. Berkeley’s incident came much later.

On Wednesday, May 16, 1956, temperatures in Berkeley climbed to over 90 degrees. Smog from car exhaust and perpetual garbage burning along the bay shore layered over the East Bay.

Afternoon water fights broke out both north and south of campus where sex-segregated student living groups—fraternities, sororities, cooperatives, and boarding houses—were thickly clustered.

“At Channing circle” the Daily Californian reported, “traffic was completely blocked by police as women of all ages were drenched by water thrown from all sorts of receptacles including bathtubs…”

A lull followed. Then, around 9:30 p.m., “several hundred men students from the comparatively small frat area on the north side of the campus crossed to the bigger southern area—raiding the women’s residence hall (Stern Hall) on the campus en route,” the paper said.

“At first the temper of the crowd was good natured, and many of the women were friendly and even encouraged the men,” a university report later noted. “In some instances, they left doors unlocked to facilitate entrance.”

“At some sorority houses girls thronged upstairs balconies to heave scanties at the approaching male mob—whether to encourage the invasions or dissuade them being an unanswered question,” said the San Francisco Examiner.

The mood then began to turn “from good natured participation in a game to … real belligerency.”

“At the height of the melee, hundreds of students broke into one sorority house after another, stealing lingerie, overturning furniture, breaking doors and manhandling coeds,” said the San Francisco Chronicle.

Along with underwear some purses, money, watches, a wedding trousseau, and even the graduation speech notes of the senior class valedictorian reportedly disappeared.

“I have never seen so much complete hysteria,” Delta Zeta vice-president Darleen Winwick told the Daily Californian. “The lights were out and people were running everywhere.”

Coeds wielded irons, umbrellas, and table lamps as impromptu weapons against the invaders.

The raid finally fizzled out after the crowd headed towards the dormitories at the University’s Smyth-Fernwald housing complex on the top of Dwight Way and were met by male residents who blocked the way to the women’s halls.

Crowd remnants turned back and were talked into dispersing by university officials and the ASUC President.

“Before the wild affair was over, virtually every raider had donned women’s underclothes over his own clothing or sported a similar trophy atop his head as a snood,” said the Examiner.

“I am horrified,” Assistant Dean of Students William Shepherd told the press after viewing the riot area in a Berkeley police car. “Nothing like this has ever happened in my university career.”

“2,000 At UC Go On Wild Spree” the San Francisco Chronicle headlined the morning after. Although Cal students formed the bulk of the crowd, others were implicated.

Berkeley Police “got back twenty-three undergarments from West Berkeley youngsters—not university students—who joined in the fun” and were stopped leaving the area.

A Warring Street resident told the press he “saw many older men in the crowd, some of them baldheaded. Many of them had pillowcases, filling them with loot.”

In the aftermath, some of the more salacious stories were discounted.

“There has been no confirmation of reports of girls being carried nude from the houses, beds being overturned with girls in them or girls being stripped of pajamas,” Captain L.H. Laird of the Berkeley police told the press.

“The police said they had yet to receive a single complaint of personal injury, or of assault in any manner,” the Examiner reported.

Still, lurid accounts spread around the country and world.

“Some girls were stripped, pummeled a bit, and carried away in pajamas or in the nude…” read the “Education” section of the May 28, 1956 Newsweek.

Then-Chancellor Clark Kerr later wrote that “one alumnus sent me a newspaper story from Beirut about how naked women had been carried through the streets of Berkeley on the shoulders of men students on their way to an orgy that would match anything the ancient Romans could have organized.”

“Ours has been one of the few institutions in the country that didn’t have panty raids or mob violence of any kind,” mourned Dean of Students Hurford Stone.

“Deans all over the country have asked me how we did it, and I contended we have more mature students and a student government that actually worked. Now we have to say we are like all the rest.”

The day after the raid, a Daily Californian editorial entitled “The Masses Are Asses,” calling the event “one of the most horrifying mass riots in the history of the university.”

Signed by assistant managing editor Dennie Wombwell, who lived in the sorority district, it deplored “a tragedy—and a disgusting one.”

Not all students agreed. One male letter writer to the Daily Cal called Wombwell “convulsive” and “hysterical,” while the riot was merely “unfortunate.”

But others supported the editorial dismay.

“It is interesting, and perhaps a little sad, to note that the most determined and spontaneous effort to date by the students of the nation’s greatest university had as its object the redistribution of lingerie,” one letter writer observed.

The cost of damage to houses and losses of clothing was later estimated at about $12,000.

“The streets surrounding the area took on the appearance of a bargain basement after a women’s lingerie sale,” the Oakland Tribune said.

“Men’s groups throughout the campus area today continued to return articles of “unmentionables” they had carried as banners the Wednesday,” the Tribune added on Friday, May 18. Men’s living groups pledged reimbursement.

“Sorority girls robbed of their underthings today stood in line to view the array of lingerie collected by the campus police. Those who could identify specific garments were allowed to take them back to their living quarters,” reported the Oakland Tribune.

Why did it happen?

“College males, like other males of the same age, are essentially small boys grown tall,” Dr. Tamotsu Shibutani, “a UC sociologist” told the Oakland Tribune.

An official UC report partially blamed an exhausting academic year with few breaks, along with “the combination of exceptionally hot and humid weather and the tension of impending final examinations.”

Only part of the crowd actually participated in the sorority invasions, and the police were “ineffective,” the report added.

Berkeley’s city manager said that in situations like this, “police practice does not consist of answering individual calls and dashing madly from point to point.”

On May 28, the Faculty Committee on Student Conduct issued academic sanctions against 14 of 16 students charged with offences related to the panty raid. Nine were suspended.

The incident later figured in a 1963 novel, Stacy Tower, by Berkeley alumnus Robert H.K. Walter. In the book, a mass panty raid at a loosely fictionalized UC campus helps derail the pending appointment of a liberal university president.

`In reality, two years after the raid Chancellor Clark Kerr—still viewed as a liberal in those pre-Free Speech Movement days—was named UC President.

And, ultimately, the story of the incident ended as it had begun—with copious amounts of cool water.

“I went to Walter Haas of the class of 1910 to ask him whether the answer to a warm night in spring might better be a cold dip in a supervised swimming pool,” Kerr later recalled. “He answered ‘yes’ and contributed $300,000,” to build the Strawberry Canyon Recreation Center for students.

Haas “often told me later” wrote Kerr, “that this gift, as he saw its many uses, had given him the most personal pleasure of the many gifts he had made. In any event, there were no more panty raids.”

Opinion

Editorials

The recent death of Jane Jacobs has prompted the usual spate of hagiographic reminiscences from professional planners and their critics who hope that they are candidates to assume the Jacobs mantle. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the word, hagiographies are Lives of the Saints, and Jane Jacobs was one of those unlucky or lucky people who are canonized before they die.

The first thing to remember about her is that she was the original NIMBY. She didn’t want the Lower Manhattan Expressway to destroy her Greenwich Village backyard, and she used her considerable writing skill (she started out as a journalist) and her organizing ability to stop it. And those planners who loudly proclaim their links to the Jacobs heritage should remember that she detested planners, precisely because of their pseudo-scientific pretensions to know better than neighborhood residents what is “good for them.”

Planning, like most fields, is subject to the whims of fashion. In the early ’60s, when Jacobs wrote The Life and Death of Great American Cities, the fashion czar in New York City was Robert Moses, who favored large-scale grandiose prescriptive urban renewal schemes. Today’s planning fashions are different, but in their own way just as prescriptive and formulaic. Believers in rapid transit today, who hold as an article of faith that if they build it riders will come, are just as fanatical as those in earlier days who insisted that mega-highways should be built everywhere.

While visiting Santa Cruz this weekend I chanced to pick up the phone when a pollster was calling, and out of curiosity let him put me through his whole spiel. At first I thought his questions were devised to test support for some political candidate or other, but at the end of the interview he confessed that his Florida company was hired by the planning department of the City of Santa Cruz to test-market solutions that might be offered in that city’s upcoming general plan revision. Funny thing—his Santa Cruz solutions, for a much smaller, more isolated town which differs from Berkeley in many important particulars, were almost identical to those which have been pushed by the Berkeley planning department: Big Boxes on traffic arteries, paving over or building on all remaining open space inside town, much more student housing for Santa Cruz’s tiny one-street “downtown,” etc.

It’s a new paradigm, but it’s still one size fits all.

This new assortment of planning fads often invokes the sacred name of Jane Jacobs because it’s somewhat Greenwich-Villagesque in detail. Taller buildings, residential over retail, no cars—what’s not to like? Everyone loves New York, a wonderful town.

The problem is that what’s right for the Village is not right for everywhere, as Jacobs would be the first to admit if she were still around to defend herself. She believed that places grew organically (and most of the places she cared deeply about were cities, but that’s a whole different discussion.)

Santa Cruz in 1965 was a little seaside resort which had what was supposed to be a small, intimate new kind of university dropped into a big ranch well out of town. Now the obscene metastasizing of the University of California is threatening to gobble up little Santa Cruz in the same way it’s threatening to take over downtown Berkeley. Berkeley, however, is a city with many more residents and a longer and more complex history and infrastructure. Also, Santa Cruz’s historic downtown, what there was of it, was mostly destroyed in the 1989 earthquake, so it’s largely been rebuilt since, now with plenty of parking lots. But Berkeley still has a wealth of historic buildings which are gravely at risk in the latest round of planning-by-fad.

Preserving cities’ historic fabric was another of Jane Jacobs’ core beliefs which many contemporary planners and developers would like to ignore. Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, has put together a whole web page of Jacobs obituaries. The one from Metro, a New York city alternative paper, quotes Berman’s contention that the arena to fight development has changed. “The forces of real estate are probably more highly organized now and the money in real estate is staggering,” he said. “Now, the battles are with private developers, with the city greenlighting their projects instead of in Robert Moses’ day, when the city itself was the enemy.”

That’s certainly true in Berkeley, with politicians and planning staff falling all over each other thinking of new and better ways to deliver the city into the hands of development capital. Mayor Bates started things off with his Task Force on Permitting and Development, launched soon after he took office. One of the fruits of their labors is the disgraceful draft for a gutted Landmarks Preservation Ordinance which is being fast-tracked over the objections of citizens for passage in July, right before the City Council’s Long Vacation.

Concerned activists are conflicted over what is the best way to stop this shortsighted plan. One group is circulating an initiative petition which would put an updated version of the current LPO on the November ballot. Others, though, fear that such an initiative would suffer the fate of the late Measure P, a height limitation initiative which was swamped by big developer money.

Cynics now point to the fate of P as the vox populi, when it was no such thing. It was just another example of how easy it is to buy elections in Berkeley, contrary to the naïve assertions of some of our frequent correspondents. There’s no spending limit for initiatives—the anti-P forces got a $5,000 “contribution” from Patrick Kennedy’s mother-in-law, who lives in Sacramento. And that’s just one example from many in the list of anti-P contributors, the majority of whom were friends, employees or family of private developers.

To make the analysis harder, Bates has been doing Sacramento-style inner-office “meet&greets” with preservationists. These are reported to combine vague offers to amend the draft with veiled threats of an even worse version if an initiative is tried and defeated. If an initiative were on the ballot, the council would probably not pass the draft in July, thus enabling mayoral opposition to be based on pie in the sky promises of improvements if the initiative is defeated.

A better strategy might be to dare the mayor and city Council to do their worst in July. Let them pass the dreadful draft if they’re foolish enough, and then mount a referendum campaign against it, coupled with an initiative for a better update if desired. A campaign against a specific bad ordinance would be easier to mount, though referendums require more signatures and developer money would still be a problem. It is possible, with plenty of time to organize, to defeat even well-funded opponents. And Jane Jacobs didn’t shy away from direct action—she was arrested in a 1968 demonstration against a revival of Robert Moses’ expressway. We’re not recommending that necessarily, but it’s another thought.

Few recent events have prompted more letters to the Planet than last week’s announcement by Andy Ross that he plans to close the Telegraph Avenue Cody’s bookstore. Many of them can be found in this issue. Correspondents have a wide variety of reactions and theories about why this decision was made, and there’s probably some truth in all of them.

First, it’s generally acknowledged that Telegraph Avenue is more than a bit seedy, and that a variety of dubious individuals hang out there. But the problem with this as a total explanation for closing the store is that Telly has been like this at least since we moved to Berkeley in 1973 and probably before. The publisher and I had our software development business in the ’80s upstairs in the historic building that now houses Rasputin’s records. The genteelly modernist Fraser’s furniture store downstairs was long gone, replaced, thanks to the city’s short-sighted economic development policy, with a Southern California western clothing chain, Miller’s Outpost, which was a dismal failure in hip Berkeley. Miller’s owned the elegant historic brick building, and was letting it slide rapidly downhill. That made for cheap rent on the second floor, of course, ideal for a start-up with no venture capital which needed easy access to computer science graduate students. But the 1989 earthquake gave us a good scare about being in an unreinforced masonry building, so we moved.

We loved being on Telly while we were there. The Caffe Mediterraneum was still owned by people who took their responsibilities seriously, both for roasting coffee and for keeping order in the shop and on the street in front. The bookstores were splendid. But most of the annoyances which people complain about today were around then. The Hare Krishnas went past our windows twice a day with loud amplified music. Late at night, we worried about being mugged as we walked home or to our car. Sullen teenagers lounged on the ledge outside our door all day, looking as ugly as they could manage. Assorted street people, crazy, drunk and worse, were everywhere—there was a guy who would stick his index finger into your coffee and stir it. Once one of our customers wearing a suit parked next to People’s Park and was followed down the street by people yelling “Businessman, businessman!”

And Andy Ross at Cody’s complained loudly about all of it, 20 or 25 years ago, just as he does today. City functionaries, some of them like Dave Fogarty still on the job 20 years later, scrambled to try to please. They banned parking even at night in the loading zones in front of the bookstores, and towed anyone (including our hapless programmers and late-night book shoppers) who parked there. The theory, I seem to remember, was that they were preventing out-of-town gangs (read non-white youth) from gathering. The loading zone in front of the Med was filled in so that outside tables could be added on what was once the public right-of-way, creating more opportunities for confrontations and sites for lounging. But Telegraph managed to maintain its rowdy edge, home away from home for those who enjoy behaving badly and experiencing the last gasp of the counter-culture in its head shops and leather emporia. Nothing much has changed since then, no matter what Ross or the politicians who’d like to profit from his problems would like us to believe.

What has changed is the culture industry, specifically the book and record businesses. Multi-store corporations and Internet sales now dominate the new book business, and it’s not the fault of the ugly punks on The Ave. Moe’s Books, next door to Cody’s on Telegraph, selling mostly used books, has kept a toehold in the market by recognizing early that change was coming and building a strong Internet presence; Cody’s management didn’t.

A variety of ways of blaming others for the store’s problems surfaced. Ross endorsed a Berkeley ballot measure aimed at stopping panhandlers from asking for money which was tossed out in federal court. He apologized later, but lost years of patronage from First Amendment absolutists like me who abhor attempts to restrict free speech. Independent booksellers, including Ross, launched an ill-fated anti-trust suit against the chains and lost that too.

Ross’s most recent strategy has been to open two new branch stores in upscale locations, Berkeley’s Fourth Street shopping enclave and Stockton Street in San Francisco. I’ve only been to the Fourth Street store once, but I’d characterize it as Cody’s Lite: many coffee-table art books and best-sellers, very much like, in fact, the chains. Closing the Telegraph store seems to be not just a geographic decision, but a decision to abandon the infinite intellectual variety that was the hallmark of the original Cody’s.

Meanwhile, if you believe Ken Sarachan, things aren’t bad at all on Telegraph. He’s the proprietor of Rasputin Records, Blondie’s Pizza and more. Encountered over Thai food in an area restaurant, he asked to be quoted as saying “I’m going down with the ship” on Telegraph—except that he says the ship’s still profitably afloat. He’s got a flourishing Internet operation and owns a good bit of property on and near The Ave. He earthquake-proofed and restored our nice old building, which is now his very successful flagship store.

This would be where I ought to confess that Ken’s been a long-term advertiser in the Berkeley Daily Planet, believing as he does that local businesses should support one another. On the other hand, Cody’s has pretty much declined to do so, which, personal pique aside, I think is a mistake. I don’t usually get involved in the Planet’s advertising sales, but since I was a successful marketeer in my mid-life, I would advise booksellers, both local and chain, that our extra-literate readers are natural buyers for their products. I couldn’t say for sure that if Cody’s on Telegraph had advertised in the local paper they might have done better business in the last few years, but it might have helped.

Public Comment

In response to Becky O’Malley’s May 16 editorial: I (we) look forward to what sort of interesting comments you’ll have about Amoeba after we bail on this scene. I’m so sorry our carefully and strategically placed print ads do not grace your pages. I notice with interest the fact that you fail to identify or mention the land banking that’s been going on around Telegraph Avenue for years—which has contributed a great deal to our various problems.

I’d truly be interested in your obviously insightful opinion as to how we might transcend the decades-long political standoff that has prevented us from making even limited progress at getting the district what it needs (and has needed for decades).

I believe Cody’s departure represents an potential opportunity to bring significant changes to the Avenue—but it’s likely to be squandered in the bureaucratic mess.

Marc Weinstein

Owner, Amoeba Records

•

CODY’S WEBSITE

Editors, Daily Planet

As an Internet customer of Cody’s for many years, I’m curious about Donna Carter’s comment “open a website.” Have I imagined Cody’s website over the years? I don’t think so, as the books I’ve ordered have both arrived and been picked up. I don’t think there is any great, much less good, independent bookseller without an active Internet site, allowing for purchases from near and far.

I have ordered books I’ve heard about, read about; books recommended by friends and books I’ve listed in my own “want to read” lists over the years—and books recommended in Cody’s seasonal lists (pretty much always posted online, and kept archived, which is great). I’ve also ordered signed copies—sometimes personalized—of books by writers I admire (and often love) who are visiting Cody’s locations when I can’t attend an event there. You have no idea what that means to me and my family. And I will continue to do so, when I can’t get to author events at Cody’s Fourth Street store or San Francisco store.

If you don’t, as Donna Carter doesn’t, know about it, check out www.codysbooks.com.

Jenna Wilder

•

THANKS TO CODY’S

Editors, Daily Planet

We would like to thank Andy Ross and his family, Mr. and Mrs. Cody, and all the great Cody’s Books employees for providing Telegraph Avenue with one of the greatest independent book stores in the country, if not the entire world. It is a sad day for Berkeley when Cody’s Books closes. I guess the one consolation is that all the minds that have been expanded by all the great Cody’s books over all the years, will continue to reverberate in the hearts and minds of the universe for many years to come.

Many reasons have been given for the demise of Cody’s Books, as well as the closing of many other long-time businesses on Telegraph Avenue: the Berkeley Market(!), Tower Records, Greg’s Pizza, the Gap, the Coffee Source, Wall Berlin, the Book Zoo, etc. We are hardly economists or financial wizards, God knows what’s going on. Andy Ross has stated that sales have been dropping since 1990, and I believe him. One reason for this, I believe, is that rents have tripled for many Berkeley residents during those 15 years. And people who used to have hundreds of dollars of disposable income to spend on books, records, jewelry, etc., now are forced to scrape together every penny just to keep a roof over their heads.

Another reason for the dismal state of our economy, I believe, is the billions of dollars that that idiot George Bush is spending destroying and then trying to re-build Iraq’s economy.

Much has been made of blaming the street people for the myriad of Telegraph Avenue woes. There’s no question that there are some obnoxious, dysfunctional, and even dangerous street people up there (I’ve probably been one of them on a bad day). But I think this has been way over-blown, simply because the streets of Telegraph are packed with more people than ever these days. And most of them aren’t street people (come up and count them some time if you don’t believe me). The customers are there: They just don’t have much money to spend anymore. At any rate, we wish Cody’s Books the best of luck in all their future endeavors. As Andy Ross said: “Cody’s Books isn’t real estate, it’s an idea.” It’s just a damn shame that that idea will no longer be part of the Telegraph Avenue real estate. We will all be poorer for it. All the best.

Ace Backwords

B.N. Duncan

•

MAKING USE OF THE WEB

Editors, Daily Planet

I read with pleasure that the Daily Planet is using the Internet to be a true daily. Congratulations. The move seems to tie in with your comment that Moe’s Books developed a good Internet business and Moe’s survives, while Cody’s owner Ross neglected the net, an error which appears to have contributed to the lack of funds to keep the Telegraph flagship branch of Cody’s alive.

Ted Vincent

•

ASHBY BART TASK FORCE

Editors, Daily Planet

The task force members for the proposed Ashby BART development have been selected. How much is just window dressing to give the appearance neighborhoods actually have a say in their future? (Much like the recent dog and pony show for the proposed Landmarks Preservation revisions.) Are residents any match for developers and their determined backers?

Recently, a task force nominee and member of our Lorin District neighborhood list-serve asked if anyone had information about the task force that SBNDC and Ed Church were putting together. He wondered if anyone had knowledge of what Mayor Bates and Max Anderson had been up to regarding the development. The neighbor had been contacted by Ed Church weeks earlier but had not heard further. Wondering if other neighbors had been contacted, the nominee was nervous about a process without public knowledge.

I forwarded a copy of an e-mail questionnaire that “select” nominees had received from Ed Church. I was not surprised yet disappointed that many nominated neighbors and I received no communications from Ed Church. (For heavens sake, we are listed in the phone book.) A total of 44 nominees were listed on Church’s website, how many were contacted? Others were nominated but did not appear on the list of nominees. To my knowledge none of the “house parties” that Mayor Bates touted to vision the Ashby BART development had taken place either.

Another neighbor described the task force selection as, “throw the dog (neighborhood) a bone, but don’t let ‘em chew.” Lo and behold, just two days after I circulated my e-mail, a dozen task force members were announced on our list-serve by Ed Church. A glaring omission was the absence of any Ashby Arts District member. There may be conflicts of interest among some selected members as well.

This is the state of our city politics of late. It is clearly time for us to stand up and take the ownership of our neighborhoods and our city back. If not, it’s more paved back yards, condo high rises and fast food joints to come.

Robin Wright

•

BERKELEY BOWL WEST

Editors, Daily Planet

The controversy over building the second Berkeley Bowl in West Berkeley has made me wonder even more why we don’t have a grocery store co-op here in the supposed progressive bastion of California. I think it is ridiculous that we don’t. Our choices are between Whole Foods, a growing corporate chain, Berkeley Bowl, a “family-owned” business who fought the unionizing of their employees tooth and nail, and the impending Trader Joe’s, with their over-packaged produce and no bulk bins, and most of their goods shipped from far, far away. I’m not even considering Safeway and their ilk, with 12 aisles of nothing and a store that smells like noxious detergents more than anything approaching edible.

We should have a health food co-op that is on par with Rainbow in San Francisco. I know there are small markets scattered around Berkeley, but their prices tend to be very expensive and their stock is limited, of course. Some neighborhoods have nothing, and thus the automobile insanity at the aforementioned stores. A strategically placed co-op market could also encourage bike riding and walking, which would benefit everyone.

So what’s up? Is anyone else wondering about this? And what are we going to do about it?

Jessica Taal

•

ISRAEL AND THE

UNITED STATES

Editors, Daily Planet

We congratulate Kris Martinsen (letters, May 16) for the timely letter pointing out some obvious inconsistencies in the arguments of Israel’s apologists in the United States. Abetted by the United States, Israel has failed to comply with 33 United Nations resolutions. The Israeli government has become adept at balancing its roles as supposed victim and as oppressor and occupier. For a reasonably complete review of Israel’s policy and U.S. complicity in them, readers are referred to the scholarly analysis of John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago) and Stephen Walt (Harvard University) titled The Israel Lobby published in March issue of The London Review Of Books.

For tactics used by apologists to suppress opposing views, the book by Norman Finkelstein (Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of anti-Semitism and

the Abuse of History, University of California Press) is important reading. Among the tactics used at a personal level are name calling and labeling. We cannot continue to ignore Israel’s lock on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and hence we need open discussion and not intimidation.

Andrew and Marina Pizzamiglio-Gutierrez

Kensington

•

FRESH VOICES CORRECTION

Editors, Daily Planet

Thank you very much for running Ken Bullock’s preview of our Fresh Voices VI programs. We really appreciate your support for the arts, and Ken’s excellent writing. Please note, however, that, perhaps due to a balky phone connection at this end, I believe I characterized Steven Clark’s “Amok Time” as having “a tongue-in-cheek demented, pop-influenced score,” rather than “a tongue-in-cheek insipid pop score.” For me, “demented, pop-influenced” is high praise. “Insipid pop” is not. If possible, we would appreciate this correction be made in your web page.

Thanks again for your article, and best wishes.

Dr. Mark Alburger

Music Director

Goat Hall Productions

Fresh Voices VI Festival

•

THE G.O.P.

Editors, Daily Planet

Alan Swain’s op-ed whining about his disillusionment with contemporary conservatism cuts no ice with me.

First, the war on terrorism is a sick joke. For many years the United States government has been what Martin Luther King, Jr. labeled it in April, 1967, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” We have armed and financed dictatorships from Indonesia to Zaire, from Guatemala to Singapore, ad nauseum. William Blum estimated that the policies of the U.S. government were responsible for over six million deaths and that estimate was made twenty five years ago! We created the monster in Afghanistan which came home to haunt us on 9-11.

Second, the Bush tax cuts combined with huge increases in unnecessary Pentagon porkbarrel spending have saddled us with the greatest debt in our history and will lead to our bankruptcy as a nation if not reversed.

Third, we are in far greater of losing our basic civil liberties under Bush than anything a foreign foe could do to us. Outside of the salient fact that our foreign policy creates more enemies every day leaving us much less secure than when the chimp took office.

Fourth, we need to get the oil prices under control before they wreak inflationary havoc throughout the entire economy. I don’t see any “pandering” going on here, I see politicians kowtowing to the oil company ripoff.

I share Swain’s disgust with liberals who have sacrificed core socio-economic principles for the dead end of identity politics. But the GOP was never a solution.

If the Democrats somehow don’t manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory once again this fall, the first order of business is the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Nothing compares in importance with this absolute necessity.

Michael Hardesty

Oakland

•

THE PATH OF TRUTH

Editors, Daily Planet

State Senator Sheila Kuehl has introduced a bill into the California Legislature that would require public school textbooks to include the contributions of gays and lesbians. This brings to mind Schopenhauer’s statement that all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Thirty years ago, the National Organization for women and many other women’s and minority groups read literally thousands of text books to document the depiction of women and minorities. This was cruel and unusual punishment. How many times can you look at Mother (always wearing an apron) saying “Wait till your father gets home, he’ll know what to do,” and Jane saying, “I know I’m just a girl”? Or high school texts in which the only African American depicted was Booker T. Washington, the only woman, Marie Curie, and the internment of Japanese Americans not mentioned.

The May 11 Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) meeting offered a peek into how things get done here in Berkeley; as in most other places, who you know trumps everything. We are members of the West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs and attended the ZAB meeting. While the Alliance favors cleaning the air and preserving union jobs at Pacific Steel Casting (PSC), the Alliance opposes the staff’s finding that PSC’s request for a use permit to construct a carbon adsorption system for Plant 3 is categorically exempt from review under the California Environmental Quality Act. PSC and its regulator —the Bay Area Air Quality Management District—claim the carbon system will resolve odor problems. However, the community has not just been asking for odor nuisance complaints to be resolved. For a quarter century, the West Berkeley community has been trying to get PSC to clean up its act by ridding operations of toxic pollution, mitigating nuisance emissions, and providing full transparency to prove the air is clean. At the ZAB meeting, community members of the Alliance had many unanswered questions that the city staff report skirted by finding the project exempt.

Why is the Alliance opposed to a quick approval of PSC’s use permit request?

The proposed carbon system filters odors but not all pollutants. PSC installed carbon adsorption systems in Plant 2 (1985) and in Plant 1 (1991), yet a Pacific Institute analysis shows that, of all Bay Area Toxic Release Inventory facilities ranked for carcinogen risk-related impacts in 1997, Pacific Steel Casting Company ranks 2nd highest for carcinogen risk out of 30 industries. A 2006 report by Dr. Michael Wilson of the University of California Berkeley’s School of Public Health states that the U.S. EPA stationary source risk ratings for 2,171 industrial sites in six Bay Area counties ranked Pacific Steel Casting the 12th highest risk. A 2004 report by the Oakland/Berkeley Asthma Coalition states that Berkeley has an asthma hospitalization rate 2.5 times the national Healthy People 2000 objective, disproportionately among people of color. The study also states that West Berkeley has the highest rate of asthma emergency room visits in all of Berkeley, in part because, “These areas are more heavily impacted by industry that releases a multitude of pollutants into the air….”

According to PSC’s engineer, Chris Chan, PSC did not use Plant 3 to its full capacity until after 2000. This means PSC posed a serious cancer risk while carbon systems were present and used in Plants 1 and 2—and Plant 3 was not operating fully. Now Plant 3 operations are increasing dramatically. There are data confirming community fears of serious health problems from PSC’s toxic pollution, but where is data refuting these fears?

The Alliance has requested—and never received—material safety data sheets, updated and comprehensive emissions inventory data, and complete flow diagrams of the operations, sources and processes in PSC’s facility. If PSC’s updated emissions have not been analyzed, how can we know that the carbon system will capture all pollutants? Even the city manager could not get access to this data; there is no reason for the city to presume PSC is exempt from a CEQA environmental assessment before its permits are approved.

The Alliance also has concerns about the carbon adsorption system potential to interact, react and create new, more toxic byproducts. The Alliance believes that when the emissions inventory and flow diagram data are made public and analyzed, as they should have been in the staff report, vital concerns can be addressed. The staff report did not reference or analyze the emissions inventory or the flow diagram. Our basic point to the ZAB last Thursday was that this was the City of Berkeley’s opportunity to do a thorough analysis of the proposed carbon adsorption system in the context of existing plant operations. PSC’s use permit has not been reviewed by the city since 1991, and since 2000 the company’s production levels have increased each year. The Alliance felt a more thorough environmental review of the facility and its operations was in order before the city moved to approve the use permit request. We hoped the city’s precautionary principle policy would play a role here, but it didn’t.

Mr. Brenneman reported on the May 11 ZAB meeting in the May 16-18 Daily Planet but his reporting missed the major story relating to the PSC item, at least for us, which is “it’s not what you know but who you know that counts in the end.” When the Alliance arrived at the meeting, we had no idea what a circus it would ultimately become. PSC’s item was third on the agenda after continued hearings on the new Berkeley Bowl and the possible Trader Joe’s building at University and MLK Jr. Way. But the ZAB Board reordered the agenda so that shorter items could be heard first. The PSC project was not one of the projects moved ahead of the Berkeley Bowl hearing. Why, we are still not clear. The meeting began at 7:00 pm. By 1:00 am the ZAB was in its fourth hour on Berkeley Bowl. Alliance members were seated three rows up from Dion Aroner (former assemblywoman and former chief of staff to Tom Bates) whose PR firm, AJE Partners, was representing PSC. In the hallway, PSC management was huddled with five Bay Area Air Quality Management District (Air District) senior staff and Aroner’s partner Elizabeth Jewel. They had been plotting strategy together all evening. Dr. Nabil Al-Hadithy, the city’s toxics manager, was standing nearby.

Our energy level was fading, but so was Ms. Aroner’s patience. She and Elizabeth Jewel summoned Calvin Fong, the mayor’s aide, who had been in the audience for some time, to inform him that “this is outrageous” and something had to be done. Thus began the interesting drama of Mr. Fong and the lead board staff person, Debbie Sanderson, making several back and forth trips from the meeting room to the hallway and back. Ms. Aroner and Ms. Jewel joined PSC management, Air District staff, and city staff for urgent discussions in the hallway. We, in the meantime, had begun asking Zoning Board staff about whether the PSC item would still be heard. Ms. Sanderson wasn’t clear because she said PSC really wanted to have their item heard that night. Now it was past 1:15 a.m. and staff told us that they would suggest to the board that the PSC item be heard at a special meeting on May 18. Meanwhile, ZAB was still grilling the consultants who prepared the traffic study for the new Berkeley Bowl.

We were reconciling ourselves to coming back on the 18th because we believed that a new day would be preferable to a hearing on a complicated matter such as PSC at 1:30 a.m. before a ZAB that had just spent four hours listening to Berkeley Bowl public testimony and debating the merits of the traffic study. ZAB soon interrupted their Berkeley Bowl deliberations to vote on a motion to hear the PSC item on May 18. The motion passed and ZAB returned to the traffic study.

Things got a little murky at this point. We were preparing to leave, but after another one of her visits to the people in the hallway, Ms. Sanderson suddenly asked to take a poll of those board members who would be attending the May 18 meeting. Two of the eight said that they couldn’t attend. Ms. Aroner had resumed her seat a few rows behind us, and I could hear her mutter “oh no, he needs to be there.” The shuttle diplomacy between staff and the people in the hallway continued. Mr. Fong approached us to say that PSC would in fact be heard after the Berkeley Bowl discussion had ended. We protested that it was now 1:30 a.m. and the board had already voted to reschedule the hearing to May 18. Our protests were in vain. Next thing we know the board decides to hear PSC next. We didn’t hear a formal motion or vote, but the decision was made. Dion Aroner and PSC would have their decision that night (er.. morning). And so it went, over our objections, the exhausted ZAB wrapped up some kind of vote or other on Berkeley Bowl and announced they were moving on to PSC.

It was now past 1:30 a.m. and we all had been there since 7:00 p.m. The ZAB members were tired, we were exhausted and frustrated as now we had serious concerns about whether we would get a fair hearing at this late hour. The hearing began. Each of us was called to speak. We laid out our serious concerns about the project review and the late hour of the hearing. PSC gave a presentation. The ZAB asked a few questions of the Air District staff and PSC. The Air District and PSC refuted our concerns. After assuring us that they would revoke PSC’s use permit if the odor problems persisted (and I have a bridge to sell you…), the ZAB voted unanimously to approve the modification of the use permit.

It was now about 2:15 a.m. PSC had what it wanted. Aroner, Jewel, and the PSC and Air District managers were happy. AJE had done what they had been hired to do. And the City of Berkeley and its residents were well served by the political process. Or were they?

After the hearing we learned that Mayor Bates will now take a seat on the Air District Board representing Berkeley and Alameda County. What will this mean to resolving the long-standing issues relating to PSC’s pollution of our air? Considering his long association with Dion Aroner and his (and the city’s) lack of any substantive involvement in resolving the matter, we are very interested in what perspective Mayor Bates will bring to the issue representing Berkeley on the Air District board. City staff and politicians have long maintained that it’s the Air District and not Berkeley that has the real authority in overseeing PSC as a way of excusing the city’s lack of any significant effort on its own. Now Berkeley will have a voice on that board. We know that many people in West Berkeley will be watching to see just how the mayor uses his new position.

Christopher Kroll, Janice Schroeder and Davis Schroeder are members of the West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs.

Although I enjoyed reading, and laughing at, Neil Cook’s satirical commentary on Berkeley High Baseball and San Pablo Park, it contains some denigrating comments about our team and the fine young men who comprise it. Unfortunately, some people take these comments seriously, so I feel obligated to respond.

Yes, it is true that our players, without revealing any parts of their anatomies that cannot be shown in a G-rated movie, change clothes in the bleachers and the dugout. It would be impossible for them to cram into the bathroom, hold one set of clothing above the puddles beneath them, and change their pants and shoes while balancing on one foot. The only seat available is a frequently wet and slimy toilet seat in an open stall. A room behind the stall serves as the team’s crowded storage shed. When players go to retrieve equipment practice is often delayed 10 minutes out of respect for a man’s need to use the aforementioned stall. Although others may use the shed behind the backstop as a urinal, our players always run to the bathroom for that activity.

These inconveniences occur precisely because San Pablo Park is a public park which our teams are generously allowed to use between the hours of 4 and 7 p.m. in the afternoon from February through May. Any activity that occurs on that field outside of those hours is not associated with Berkeley High School. This should be obvious as our players are in class during the day and most of our coaches are teaching classes. And, our teams are filled with outstanding students.

The stereotypical characterization of our players as competitive jocks and our school as a place that values athletics over academics is completely baseless. Despite having to miss as much class time to travel to home games and set up a fence as they do to take a bus to an away game, our team maintains better than a 3.0 grade point average. In my six years as a coach, all of our players have gone on to colleges and universities except two; one chose professional baseball. As a teacher, I can attest that athletics is our most consistently successful academic program. In addition to providing motivation to maintain academic eligibility, participation on a school sports team increases pride, self-esteem, and connection to school.

Although the long debate over the Derby Street field has inspired lurid fables of the catastrophe that would accompany the field, Mr. Cook does reveal the major problem associated with living next to a baseball field: foul balls. Ironically, according to some city officials, his intransigent insistence on demanding an ineffective backstop overhang thwarted efforts to install mesh above the existing fencing that could actually reduce the amount of balls that leave the field. In the current configuration, of the diamond and backstop, foul balls land in neighbors’ yards during most of our games. Upon the request of the neighbors, our players have been instructed to retrieve balls in view in front yards and to seek permission before entering a back yard or searching through plants. If a different policy is desired, we are happy to abide by it. Obviously, we would prefer to have fewer balls leave the field. Hopefully, if a new field is built on Derby Street, we can construct it in a manner that will minimize this hazard. I am looking forward to an honest discussion with the stakeholders in this lingering controversy and am optimistic that the result will be a field we can all enjoy.

Tim Moellering teaches English and history and coaches baseball at Berkeley High.

boona cheema writes about “the peace movement’s hostility towards Vietnam soldiers.” I’m not sure what she’s talking about. I was not yet a teenager when that war ended; still, I have some memory of it and the protest movement it inspired. In the midwestern industrial town I grew up in, one way I opposed the war was by joining kids across the country and wearing a black arm band to school. I had it repeatedly ripped off my arm by other kids; mostly, I suppose, as punishment for being different rather than as an expression of support for the war. However, I don’t remember anyone being hostile to Vietnam vets; after all they were our fathers, uncles, and cousins and, less often, our mothers and aunts. MIA bracelets were popular in school then, too.

Perhaps, cheema is referring to anti-war types spitting on returning vets but there’s little evidence that ever happened on a large-scale, if at all. The myth of the spat upon soldier has been soundly debunked by Jerry Lembke in his book, The Spitting Image. As Air Force veteran H. Bruce Franklin writes in Vietnam and Other American Fantasies, “There is no contemporaneous evidence of any antiwar activists spitting on veterans. The first allegations of such behavior did not appear until the late 1970s. The spat-upon veteran then became a mythic figure used to build support for military fervor and, later on, the Gulf War.”

In any event, I share cheema’s concerns about hate, aggression, and abuse in today’s peace movement. As A. J. Muste pointed out, “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.” Surely, hate, aggression, and abuse can’t be very helpful although in my experience self-styled liberal peaceniks are more likely to abuse other anti-war protestors than they are to target advocates of the current war. As for anger, there’s nothing wrong with it per se. It seems to me that there ought to be a place in progressive movements for a healthy anger that focuses and energizes some of us to engage in the daunting struggles we face.

I do not deny that there is such a thing as “verbal violence;” however, in the peace movement, I see the phrase more often used by the spiritually correct to discredit and silence those holding a critical or opposing opinion. In its World report on violence and health, the World Health Organization defines violence as “The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.”

In her venerable Conquest of Violence, Joan Bondurant defines violence as: “... the willful application of force in such a way that it is intentionally injurious to the person or group against whom it is applied.” In my opinion, the peace movement would do better to reserve the word “violence” for those rare instances where force, intent, and injury really do come together. We need to work harder to understand and, where possible, resolve our substantive disagreements when merely offensive, disagreeable, or critical speech comes our way.

Finally, yes, we ought to “Love the Soldier” but we must also remind the troops of, and hold them accountable to, the Nuremberg principles. Among these are the principles that “Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible ...” and “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government ... does not relieve him from responsibility ...” We must hold our brothers and sisters accountable in order to try to stop future and ongoing killing but also as a step towards restorative justice for their victims and healing for them. Of course, we must also consider and take responsibility for our own complicity in the death machine as consumers, voters, taxpayers, and workers.

Michelle J. Kinnucan is a Veteran for Peace and the author of Pedagogy of (the) Force: The Myth of Redemptive Violence.

My workplace is located one block from the proposed West Berkeley Bowl. It’s a unionized enterprise and an Alameda County-certified Green Business.

We take seriously our commitment to sustainability both for the environment and for our community.

Our firm is also an active member of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WeBAIC) and as such endorses WeBAIC’s call for an economic impact report on the repercussions for the current businesses of situating a 91,000-square-foot retail store (over twice the size of the current Bowl) adjacent to a residential area and near an already impacted freeway exit at Seventh and Ashby.

Sad to say, the City of Berkeley is promoting this out-of scale project. The city administration has not been able to walk its green talk—or to

promote a sound democratic process.

A regional shopping “experience” is neither what West Berkeley needs nor what was proposed in the bold and well-crafted West Berkeley Plan. That

plan was ahead of its years, envisioning a human scale community with a rich but delicate diversity of uses. Its “green” vision will be trashed by the scope of this project. There is nothing green about encouraging extra freeway auto traffic or clogging the narrow side streets around the store that are vital to keep accessible for the established businesses in the area. And, as many have said, putting a project on this scale up against a semi-residential neighborhood without due consideration of the traffic and economic impacts is simply irresponsible.

Yes, this project will serve the neighbors, but it is self-serving for the Berkeley Bowl to take credit for that when we know from their poor labor relations practices that their concern for stakeholders is a decidedly secondary consideration.

As for democratic process: What has stalled this process is the bungled environmental process and the unbelievably poor traffic reports. The first report (the Initial Study) was so misguided that the West Berkeley Traffic and Safety Coalition had to hire its own consultant to set it right and get the city to require an environmental impact report. It is outrageous that local businesses and residents had to pay to correct the errors in an official city government report. Subsequent reports on the part of the traffic engineers hired by the city contain serious flaws.

I personally would like to question the professionalism of these consultants. Businesses I am familiar with may be able to retain a customer if they “drop the ball” once, but if they do it twice they lost a customer. Why does the City of Berkeley have such tolerance for questionable professional opinion? It doesn’t reflect well on the criteria the staff uses for its selection of expert opinion.

As a result of these missteps and the resulting delays, we find ourselves being rushed through hearings that are established to give some validity to democratic process but cannot possibly do so at bullet train speed.

So much for a reasoned consideration of one of the largest projects on the city’s agenda.

So much for the concern of the local businesses and the neighbors.

And so much for democratic process.

I was born and raised in Chicago and what I sense here, in this process in Berkeley, is a whiff of a familiar smell.

I am a long-time and enthusiastic supporter of the West Berkeley Bowl project, and have attended every meeting on this issue for the past three years. I live a block away from the site, on one of those “alternative” route streets that could experience an increase in traffic. But I am more than willing to accommodate this in order to have such a wonderful and worthwhile project in my neighborhood.

I think that it behooves us to show support for “home grown” businesses. The Bowl is not a big box store (as some would like to convince you it is), it isn’t even as large as many new supermarkets. Nor do I think that it will have quite the regional draw like an IKEA. What it is a world-class grocery store that has demonstrated its community values by bringing to market the fresh foods grown by California family farmers, and by offering them at prices that are affordable and attractive to the people of Berkeley, regardless of their economic strata. It is a green business in the truest sense of the word.

Berkeley has a long tradition as a city whose populace cares about the culture of food and how it is grown and distributed, from the early days of the Berkeley Co-op (where I used to sell my organic apples) to Alice Waters with her edible schoolyard to UC’s Michael Pollan with his investigations into the perils of factory farming. We as a community pride ourselves on our knowledge of what good food is and how it is produced, and have long championed the organic farming movement. So I find it ironic that Berkeley is still debating the merits of allowing the Bowl to build a state-of-the-art store—with a much needed community center—on a long-abandoned site in one of the least densely developed or populated areas in the city. Any other city, be it Oakland or Emeryville, would be welcoming the Bowl with open arms. The benefits of this project so outweighs the negative aspects that it unconscionable that this project could have taken so long to win approval.

With all the concerns about our country’s epidemic of obesity and diabetes (even within the youngest of our citizens) we should be applauding a grocer who provides its customers with the largest selection of fresh grown produce. Some who oppose the size of this project have questioned why the public needs such a wide array of choices—but take it from someone who has a graduate degree in agricultural development from UC Davis and who was one of the first organic apple growers in Sonoma County—that such diversity is vital to the sustainability of a robust family farm sector. And to find a visionary grocer who supports small farmers by showcasing their products and who also forges relationships with them, is truly remarkable. Glenn Yasuda should be cheered as a local hero and not jeered as a Sam Walton. It is important for Berkeley to view this project in a much broader context than knee-jerk NIMBYism, or how it might affect local land values (which are soaring with or without the Bowl), or if we might be inconvenienced a few more minutes in traffic—and to realize that by supporting this project we are also showing support for much larger social issues impacting the lives of so many others, like the small family farmers and the health of our children.

I do believe that most of the concerns, especially those having to do with traffic in the adjacent neighborhood, are easy to mitigate. But the overriding considerations of what benefits the Bowl will bring to Berkeley should merit approval for the project. We all should do what you can to insure that the Bowl is built, and built soon, to do otherwise would be a disservice to all of Berkeley but most especially to the people of West Berkeley.

Berkeley has a real problem with property crime and no part of Berkeley has been untouched by this rising tide of crime. Our City needs to make a clear statement that the rate of property crimes must be reduced and that there are concrete steps that will be taken to achieve that goal.

Berkeley’s auto theft rate in 2003 was 50 percent greater than Oakland’s and 100 percent greater than the state of California’s. Between 2000 and 2003 the auto theft rate in Berkeley increased 11 percent each year. To lower this rate we need to look for innovative solutions, solutions that leverage our tax dollars to achieve the most reduction possible.

Auto theft hits hardest at working people. In 2004, California’s top 10 stolen vehicles averaged 12 years old and were worth $2,750. These cars often represent people’s primary means of getting to work and they are probably not covered by insurance against theft. When these cars are stolen, the theft severely disrupts the lives of those who depend on them.

I have proposed a community-based plan that has the potential to both reduce auto theft and to directly aid those residents who have suffered from this crime. The proposal asks the city to adopt as policy the installation of unobservable vehicle protection systems in cars in Berkeley.

Research in other communities by Ayers and Levitt on Lojack (the most widely used GPS based unobservable vehicle protection system) show a clear correlation between the rate of penetration of these systems and the reduction of auto thefts. This was particularly striking in Boston where a 5 percent penetration rate led to a 50 percent reduction in auto thefts. Over 90 percent of the cars with Lojack installed were returned within 24 hours. Boston is not Berkeley, but such strong data deserves to be looked at and evaluated in terms of its impact on our problem.

My proposal applies the strengths that this research identifies to the issues surrounding auto theft in Berkeley. It has five major components.

1) The City of Berkeley should establish as city policy, and widely publicize, the installation of unobservable vehicle protection systems in existing vehicles in Berkeley.

2) City of Berkeley policy should also encourage the purchase of an unobservable vehicle protection systems as an option when a new vehicle is purchased.

3) For those residents of Berkeley who have had their vehicle stolen, the City of Berkeley should offer a substantial subsidy toward the installation of a Lojack style system.

Its important to offer those who’s vehicles have been stolen a way to quickly recover their vehicle if it were stolen a second time. It is also a way for the city to do something concrete to make sure the lives of those affected are not similarly disrupted in the future.

Other benefits of this approach include putting unobservable vehicle protection systems directly into the communities that are most affected by auto theft. If auto thefts move to another area of town the installation of Lojack style systems follows immediately.

4) Berkeley should offer a smaller subsidy to all other residents of who chooses to install a Lojack style system by means of a lottery.

5) Once the funding for the subsidies of this proposal are exhausted, Berkeley should install LoJack style systems in any resident’s vehicle for $450. This one time only fee covers both hardware and installation.

This cost is still a $250 discount off the $700 list price of the system and is possible through the city’s discount for mass purchasing.

The cost for the proposal is $250,000 per year for three years. You can see a complete copy of the proposal under item 37 on the 04/18 Council agenda. http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/2006citycouncil/packet/041806/04-18a.htm

Installing unobservable vehicle protection systems will help to deter auto theft by providing the police with timely information to apprehend the criminals. It will also aid in the speedy return of vehicles that are stolen. The proposal, sponsored by Gordon Wozniak, went before the City Council on April 18 and was referred to the budget process. It will return for further discussion in the city manager’s budget presentation May 16th.

What’s unique about the unobservable vehicle protection systems is that it leverages individual action by citizens (the purchase and installation of Lojack) to achieve a greater good of the community (a community wide decrease in auto theft). Such community-based initiatives don’t look at solving the problem by moving it down the block to your neighbor’s car. They look for ways that an individual’s actions can make the entire community safer.

If you’d like to voice your opinion on the implementation of this system, you will be able to do that shortly on Berkeley’s newest participatory forum, Kitchen Democracy. http://www.kitchendemocracy.org. Their goal is to strengthen democracy by engaging citizens in local issues. Your comments will be forwarded to the City Council.

Now that the City Council and ZAB have approved numerous oversized buildings without sufficient parking, they are ready for the residents to take up the slack. Today (Tuesday), the Berkeley City Council is poised to make it easier than ever to pave over the town. Oh well, who needs oxygen anyway?

Georgette Wrigley

•

ENOUGH ZAB

Editors, Daily Planet:

I was surprised by how much Zoning Adjustments Board coverage there was in the May 9 edition. It was as if Jesus was going to rise up from Heinz Street Thursday and reappear at the ZAB meeting to cast judgment on all of Berkeley: All the good people would get to spend their days shopping at the new Trader Joe’s, while all of the sinners would have to live out eternity in the new Hudson McDonald building. Here’s hoping that John Gertz and the Peace and Justice Commission will have to share a studio.

Anyway, please mix it up a bit.

Georges Perrault

P.S. This doesn’t mean I want more Israel-Palestine stories.

•

TELEGRAPH AVENUE

Editors, Daily Planet:

There is something odd about how Telegraph Avenue has deteriorated into a haven for homeless, drug users, drug dealers, and “crazies.” Who gave them the power to take over “the Ave.”? In my Berkeley neighborhood, the residents maintain order on our streets on a daily basis with the aid of the city. Why did the business owners, UC and the city just let this happen?

Whether or not there was a subtle intention to let the area go, the result will probably be the same—urban renewal in the form of turning Telegraph Avenue into a street like the one that leads up to UCLA with its high-priced chain stores and high-rise buildings. Unless the community reclaims it now. With all the high-rise apartment buildings going up with the support of the mayor and city government can Telegraph Avenue be far behind? Already there are high-rise apartments going up near Andronico’s on Telegraph Avenue.

And to the community who has supported Cody’s for so long, why not build that coalition to stop the deterioration now? Cody’s is a community resource which we cannot afford to loose. I don’t want to go to San Francisco or Fourth Street to find a good book and there are many others who feel the same way. You will find them on Shattuck Avenue at Pegasus, Barnes and Noble, and Half-Price Books and they can easily make their way to Cody’s if it is on Shattuck Avenue.

So, Mr. Ross, please reconsider your decision to close the Telegraph Avenue store. You found the way to open the San Francisco and Fourth Street Stores. Find a way to keep a central Berkeley store. Also, open a website to sell books for those near and far who want to find a good book.

Donna Carter

•

BLAME WORTHINGTON

Editors, Daily Planet:

Kriss Worthington, you get credit for the state of the Telegraph Avenue. The ’60s are behind us and all the world has moved, on leaving the Avenue behind. There is no reason why socialism could not hold a dear place for commerce and mercantilism in its vision. Your lack of respect for business and economics and lack of a vision are driving the Avenue to ruin. Please gracefully step aside and allow others a chance to lead the Avenue.

Peter Levitt

P.S.: While this newspaper is doing soft interviews of/for Kriss in a full page recently, your competition is exposing and attempting to explain the Avenue’s decline. I have been criticized by this newspaper for calling on the editors to cheerlead for Berkeley, by pointing out real problems and debating possible solutions. Where is the Daily Planet’s explanation for the Avenue’s decline and Kriss’ Telegraph Avenue?

•

AGAINST THE ODDS

Editors, Daily Planet:

Like so many longtime residents of Berkeley, I can’t begin to convey how distraught I am to learn that Cody’s Book is closing. Fred Cody remains one of my few heroes and his successor, Andy Ross, continued to run a superlative enterprise. But given what should be evident to anyone who boldly ventures on Telegraph at night, it is clear why Cody’s and other decent businesses situated there operate against the longest odds.

I say “it is clear,” but what should indeed be crystalline has gone unspoken for too long. Urban predators know that they can come to Berkeley, receive copious goods and services, and get away with behavior not tolerated elsewhere. And the sense of very real danger that their presence produces keeps much of our citizenry from patronizing businesses not just on Telegraph, but on Shattuck and University Avenues as well.

To this we can thank the “Us v. Them” mindset created by the likes of KPFA, Copwatch, and the Berkeley Police Commission. Calling “classist,” “racist,” or “anti-homeless” those who dare designate the drug addicts, alcoholics and other felons for what they truly are—predators of the worst order—and maintaining the illusion that that festering swamp of thuggery, People’s Park, is sacred ground, such demagogues have helped transform much of Berkeley’s commercial sector into what is fast approaching a decrepitude akin to downtown Richmond.

But the real blame should fall in larger measure squarely upon the ideological simpletons of our City Council, Kris Worthington, Linda Maio, Donna Spring and Maxwell Anderson. Their incessant anti-business stance and sanctioning of anti-social behavior has clearly reached a point of diminishing returns. If these ideologues are not soon voted out of office, the loss of cherished enterprises such as Cody’s will only continue apace and the aura of fear so palpable in our downtown sector will continue to expand exponentially.

Dan Spitzer

Kensington

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HOSTILE TOWARD THE POOR

Editors, Daily Planet:

Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry and I sat in a kiddie pool outside Cody’s a few years ago to protest Andy Ross’s anti-homeless/anti-street artist policy of repeatedly hosing down the sidewalk specifically under the butts of the people they didn’t want on the sidewalk in front of the book store. We called it Cody’s Shower and Watersports Program, but both of us knew it was something Fred and Pat Cody, the original owners, would never have done. I wonder how much more business Andy Ross would have had if he hadn’t been so hostile toward the poor.

Carol Denney

•

SAD OCCASION

Editors, Daily Planet:

The departure of Cody’s Books from Telegraph Avenue will be a sad occasion for the entire city of Berkeley, but it may also be a tremendous opportunity for the city, Telegraph Avenue, and the University.

Cody’s disappearance as a major feature of the South Campus area leaves a large building in a prominent location and the opportunity to use the site for something new and innovative on a street that has not launched a truly innovative project in 30 years. One suggestion: A combination art gallery/coffee house/art and literature bookstore. The space is big enough to house a full art gallery, one large enough to include sculptures and large paintings, with maybe a room for video and/or installations. There is no such gallery anywhere in the area. The bookstore could specialize in hard-to-find art books and small press literature that is not featured in many mainstream bookstores, and would thus not be overpowered by online booksellers. In addition, there would be room for a coffeehouse, possibly upstairs and possibly in the area where the magazines are now. There are art bookstores in most large European cities, and the coffeehouse-bookstore combination has been used to great success by at least one major American bookstore chain. The bookstore or the video room could also be used for the type of author appearances in which Cody’s now excels. Such an establishment could attract a wide audience of students, art and literature lovers, and University people, and may also help invigorate an area that, with the recent sale of the Mediterraneum Caffé, may be on its way back up.

Dale Jensen

•

TELEGRAPH NEGLECTED

Editors, Daily Planet:

Isn’t it great to read the words of our so-called leaders discussing the demise of Andy Ross’ bookstore on upper Telegraph Avenue? How happy I am to see that our Chamber of Commerce, our mayor and anybody but Kriss Worthington has so much faith in the urban commercial zone called “Telegraph Avenue” that they would state their profound support for such an important urban commercial zone?

Andy Ross states, “the city has played a negative role, having ignored Telegraph Avenue. The city has decided to treat downtown as an economic opportunity and to treat Telegraph as a crime problem and not as an economic opportunity.”

Mayor Tom Bates says he suspects that “older” (read post-yuppie prigs) book buyers feel more at ease shopping at Cody’s store on trendy Fourth Street. “It’s more upscale and more comfortable,” Bates said. “Telegraph Avenue is a great place, but some people (read upscale gentrifiers) don’t want to go there.” Yeah, yuppie elders and Bates supporters hate young, indigent people.

Community Development Project Coordinator Dave Fogarty says “There are migratory youth and drug dealing,” noting that people “are acting out obnoxiously,” shouting and sitting on the sidewalk with their feet sticking out. “People find it unpleasant.”

I’ll bet the remaining merchants on Telegraph are really happy with the public face Mayor Bates, who wants to be reelected, and the supposed supporters, have given to Telegraph avenue’s image.

Hank Chapot

•

GENTRIFICATION

Editors, Daily Planet:

In her May 12 article on West Berkeley Bowl, Suzanne La Barre quotes Zelda Bronstein as saying “Approval of this project means that the future of West Berkeley is non-stop gentrification.” Well, Zelda, why should those of us (like you and me) who live near Solano Avenue keep all the gentrification to ourselves. Maybe if a little of it spilled over, West Berkeley could start paying a fair share of Berkeley’s excessive tax burden.

Jerry Landis

•

RESPONDING TO BATES

Editors, Daily Planet:

A couple important topics were absent from the commentary authored by Mayor Bates regarding his stewardship of our city as published in the May 12 edition.

No mention that property crimes in Berkeley are far higher than other East Bay cities. In fact, Berkeley property crimes are much higher than even Oakland and Richmond. A report from the City of Berkeley website detailed 379.1 property crimes per 10,000 population in 2005. Richmond’s statistics are 291.9 per 10,000 and Oakland’s are 254.2. Vallejo’s property crimes are a mere 80.7. In other words, Berkeley’s property crimes occur at about five times the frequency of Vallejo! Too bad this topic was avoided.

No mention that sales tax revenue is down in Berkeley, as much as 30 percent in the Telegraph area. Meanwhile, downtown gets the lion share of the attention and accolades.

The City Council is considering making it easier to turn back and side yards into parking lots. The city already suffers problems with the storm drain system which will be aggravated by more concrete and more development. Our unique and precious architectural heritage is under assault as the mayor tries to weaken the Landmark Preservation Ordinance. Arson fires are being set in South Berkeley.

Our quality of life is deteriorating with increased traffic, density, and crime.

Mayor Bates, please tell us what you have done to address these problems.

Robin Wright

•

APOLOGISTS

Editors, Daily Planet:

A favorite tactic of John Gertz and other apologists for Israeli state policies is to try to smear as “anti-Semitic” all critics of same. Well, first, there is the little peculiarity that Arabs are Semites. If we wanted to sink to the Gertz level, we would have to label the Israeli government as anti-Semitic because of its unjust policies towards the Palestinian Arabs.

Then we would have to assume that the critics of Israel’s barbaric policies of occupation, preventive detention, home demolitions and regular land seizures would favor these policies if the Israeli government were run by gentiles!

A person who is anti-Jewish hates Jews qua Jews, ergo for any other type of prejudice. Objecting to a foreign state which has received hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars is hardly outside the pale.

Then we are supposed to ignore the unbelievable influence that AIPAC—the Israeli lobby as they bill themselves—has over our political system. They are more powerful than the NRA, AARP or anyone else on the Hill.

I think the leaders of certain Jewish organizations that equate Jews with blanket support of Israeli policies are responsible for anti-Jewish attitudes.

Finally, there is the victim card always played by Israel’s apologists. In this bizarre scenario, Israel, which is the fourth strongest military power in the world, is in constant danger of being annihilated by the people it oppresses. I refuse to call such apologists “Zionists” as the great majority have no intention of going to live in Israel.

They are content to fight to the last Israeli and for that matter have no qualms about American casualties in wars such as the Iraq war that were egged on by AIPAC and deranged neocons.

Kris Martinsen

•

REBUILDING

Editors, Daily Planet:

By all means, property owners wishing to rebuild after a disaster should have their obstacles minimized. The city can streamline the permit process as much as possible in the event of disaster. However, to make it policy that they can rebuild by right in the original footprint of the building would be, in my estimation, foolish in many circumstances. Specifically, if the original footprint of the building is on top of a creek or so near the creek that it is dangerous to build there, then a more careful process for permitting such building would be prudent. It may be possible, with unusually sturdy and erosion resistant techniques to build something viable on top of a creek. However, not all property owners are responsible enough or even competent to determine whether it is safe to build on or near a creek, or employ the appropriate construction strategies required. There are good arguments to be made that principles of hydrology dictate that it’s almost never really safe to build a structure on top of or near a creek.

Has the city attorney given any opinion on the liability of the city should it permit a building to be constructed over or very near a creek, given known pitfalls and dangers of such construction?

I urge the mayor and City Council to err on the side of cautiousness when it comes to property owner and tenants’ safety and financial risk of both property owner and city.

Consider this situation: Earthquake disaster causes culvert failure and destruction of a home that was built on top of the culvert. What would be best course of action be in the aftermath? Take the opportunity to daylight the creek and rebuild a home at a safe distance from the creek? Rebuild by right in the original footprint of the home? Who is responsible for paying for the rebuilding of the culvert? Who pays for daylighting the creek? Which is more costly: maintaining a culvert system or maintaining open creeks?

• Many advocates of the rebuild-by-right concept also insist that all the citizens of Berkeley should be responsible for cost of maintaining the culverts on private property.

• The city cannot foot the bill for daylighting creeks, but it can create an environment in which federal or state funds for watershed improvement projects can be acquired for use in Berkeley creek restoration efforts.

Alan Gould

•

BUS RAPID TRANSIT

Editors, Daily Planet:

I attended last Thursday’s BRT forum put on by the Willard Neighborhood Association, and I read Rob Wrenn’s recent commentary piece.

The BRT is supposed to attract many new riders—from among the people who now clog Telegraph, Bancroft and Shattuck with their personal cars. We probably don’t need the BRT to carry the current riders on the BRT corridor—the present 40L bus line does that fairly well. But we do need to do something about traffic congestion, pedestrian safety, air pollution and oil consumption. Car congestion looks likely to get worse, because of population increase and UC’s parking expansion plans. After the Caldecott Tunnel gets a fourth bore, the cut-through traffic from Highway 24 will get worse.

I have a pleasant vision of the BRT. I see the big buses coming often enough that nobody is concerned about schedule. At the BRT stations, people get on and off rapidly, having pre-paid their fares. Crowds of customers throng to the stores and restaurants; students hurry to their classes and employees to their jobs. Telegraph remains a Berkeley place, but now takes on more of the ambiance of a European city. I have a similar vision for Shattuck, near the BART plaza.

I’m well aware of the prevalent unease at any prospect of losing the convenience of one’s personal car. Merchants think all their customers come by car. Even many Berkeley environmental advocates, for any trip, still choose their personal car first.

The principal question about the BRT seems to be whether its deployment truly will motivate enough bus riding to reduce car congestion. Cars removed from the roads will have to more than compensate for the reduction in road capacity caused by bus-only lanes, reduced on-street parking and so on.

Of course those drivers will not be so motivated—as long we keep our other public practices in place. Such as what? Well, a big start would be for the University to stop plans to build more parking lots, and to increase their support for the Class Pass and the bus pass for staff. The other major employers of Berkeley should follow the university’s example.

For a liberal university town, Berkeley is still deeply conservative about transit. During the last major expansion at Stanford University, public policy produced a plan which did not increase car traffic to campus. Similar achievements have been made at UCLA and University of Washington.

Berkeley definitely needs the BRT, not more car congestion and air pollution.

Steve Geller

•

FLYING COTTAGE

Editors, Daily Planet:

In Friday’s article “Arson Fires Strike South Berkeley,” you quote 3045 Shattuck owner Christina Sun as saying her “plans were legal” and that the zoning code required no public hearings. Neither statement is true.

Ms. Sun’s original permit was issued only because she deliberately misrepresented her existing and intended use of the property as a single-family residence. In reality, at the time of her application she had already converted it to what the Berkeley zoning code calls a “group living accommodation” (in layman’s terms, a rooming house) by renting out bedrooms on separate leases. When neighbors produced proof of this, the city issued a stop-work order, and the Zoning Adjustments Board nullified her permit. That nullification was held up on Ms. Sun’s appeal to the City Council and Alameda Superior Court.

Planning staff committed several other mistakes in issuing Ms. Sun’s original permit. Converting a single-family residence into a rooming house requires a public hearing, as do putting parking in the required rear yard and locating residential storage space on the ground floor.

Staff also failed to apply established design review standards: the only design requirement on her original permit was that the siding on the new portion of the cheap, hideous building match the original two-inch shiplap. It was the proper application of design review standards on her current application that led to the additional expense Ms. Sun complains of.

Even Ms. Sun’s current plans cannot legally be approved without a public hearing, since they place the required off-street parking spaces in the required rear yard, which per zoning code section 23F.04 may not contain parking spaces. Legally, the permit can be issued only after a public hearing and approval by the Zoning Adjustments Board of a use permit under section 23E.52.070D.7.

The city intends to issue Ms. Sun a permit anyway. This act would almost certainly be reversed if challenged in court. However, such a challenge would be counterproductive, since if the application were sent to the ZAB they would most likely resolve the problem by waiving the off-street parking requirement entirely.

Robert Lauriston

On our city streets, most anywhere,

There’s a Starbucks opened there.

Every store seems quite afflicted

With lines of the caffeine-addicted.

Throughout this nation, like busy ants,

There’s quite a coffee ambiance

From early morn to late night again.

No wonder we need Ambien.

—George Banks

Oakland

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following letters only appear our website.

•

PHONE RECORDS

Editors, Daily Planet:

After the latest Bush administration attack on our privacy rights was disclosed, House Minority Leader Pelosi’s office stated that she “raised concerns when she was told about the collection of phone company records and the security agency’s surveillance activities.” But what did she and others that knew of this illegal program do to actually stop the disclosure of phone records to the government? Why didn’t they inform the public of what was transpiring?

Do not give me the excuse of “National Security and the need for secrecy.” Many crimes have been committed by this administration using this excuse as cover. And too many Democratic leaders have gone along with these crimes using the same excuse.

The world can not afford to wait for more of these outrages to occur. It is time to drive out the Bush regime and all its lackeys before we have no freedom left to protect. To learn more about this, see worldcantwait.net.

Kenneth J. Theisen

Oakland

•

MORE ON PHONE RECORDS

Editors, Daily Planet:

I wonder why it is OK with Bush and Cheney that the government take phone records of millions and millions of Americans, and analyze who was talking to whom, yet, they refuse the public’s demand to know who the oil industry people were whom they met with in 2001, when they formed our government’s energy and war policies.

Their double standard isn’t simply an example of arrogant hypocrisy. It obstructs the people’s right to hold our government accountable.

Fomenting a frothy fear of terrorism like they did when invading Iraq’s oil fields, Bush and Cheney are invading America’s privacy.

Bruce Joffe

Piedmont

•

U.S. A ROGUE STATE?

Editors, Daily Planet:

Is the United States a rogue state?

Ignoring all international agreements, led by a corrupt and incompetent organization, channeling all resources to its wealthy internal supporters,

sure that God is the source of their policies, demonizing their opponents, and engaged in dangerous military adventures throughout the world?

Comments welcomed.

Brad Belden

•

MARIJUANA

Editors, Daily Planet:

By choosing to pursue any marijuana related-investigation, such as the bust described by Suzanne La Barre in your March 31 issue, the Berkeley Police Department wastes taxpayers’ dollars and thumbs its nose at the will of the people.

As public servants, Berkeley police are sworn to uphold the laws of the city of Berkeley, whose citizens have repeatedly voted in favor of BPD’s giving lowest-priority status to marijuana-related violations. For the Berkeley Police Department to arbitrarily decide that they can ignore the will of the people is disturbing enough; recent news that they have now turned this case over to DEA agents is positively horrifying.

Regardless of the Younger v. Berkeley City Council decision, which struck down the earlier 1973 Berkeley Marijuana Initiative, BMI II is a completely separate vehicle with different parameters, passed by a strong majority of citizens in 1979. BMI II clearly states: “The city council shall seek to ensure that the Berkeley police department makes no arrests and issues no citation for violations of marijuana laws.” (Ord. 5137-NS 3, 1979) It adds, “...nor shall any expenditure be made by the city” on enforcing marijuana laws.

Some readers may be thinking, “But what about the guns that were found?” Second Amendment issues aside, consider this: When marijuana prohibition ends, growers will have less perceived need to keep firearms around for protection. The black market will shrivel. Marijuana “crimes” will disappear and significant resources will be made available to support investigations of truly violent crimes, or to be redirected into the schools, or to community services that address the root causes of criminal behavior.

Berkeley has long been a beacon of progressive thought for the entire nation. As Berkeley leads the way toward a more enlightened view of marijuana use in the United States, we especially need the support of our local police forces. We need to be able to trust that they are using our resources wisely and implementing the laws we voted for.

Berkeley police services are overseen by City Manager Phil Kamlarz, appointed by the mayor. Concerned citizens are urged to write to Mr. Kamlarz and encourage him to support the BPD in upholding BMI II, giving lowest priority to marijuana “crimes,” and resisting federal intervention in all situations involving marijuana in Berkeley. He can be reached at 2180 Milvia St. 94704, by phone at 981-7000, by fax at 981-7099, or by e-mail at manager@ci.berkeley.ca.us.

R. DeKeuster

•

APOLOGIES

Editors, Daily Planet:

Truly, on behalf of every western Iowan with half-a-brain, I profoundly apologize for the fact that anyone as stupid as Steve King could not only graduate high school but actually get elected to office. My only excuse is the ongoing brain drain that sends most of Iowa’s best and brightest any where else, especially California. Poor Steve is so dumb that he still hasn’t figured out that not only is Iowa not even an English word (its Siouan) but that Hispanic immigrants are the only folks actually willing to move here. Hopefully there’s enough irate immigrant meatpackers in Sioux City and denison to help kick the scheisskopf back to Kiron where he can peacefully resume his previous career as county sheep fucker.

There is 12.5 percent tax proposed on the sale price of duplexes and triplexes for those owners who convert their owner-occupied buildings to condominiums. (The city has rationalized this as a “fee” through something called a “nexus study”—the newest tax strategy, so that the city does not have to take the issue to the voters.) This tax is in addition to the 1.5 percent transfer tax and the 6 percent real estate commissions, and the costs charged by the planning department for the conversions.

While the conversion of a number of duplexes and triplexes in Berkeley could be a real source of affordable home ownership possibilities and a minor diminution of the rental housing supply, this will probably not be possible with this new ordinance. If people do sell as home owner opportunities, they will almost assuredly sell them as tenants in common which are not subject to control by the city.

At the City Council meeting today (Tuesday), the council will likely formalize an ordinance on condominium conversions that will tax so highly the owners of duplexes and triplexes that they among others, will probably choose not to sell as condominiums. Many, like myself, have bought these buildings as the only way we middle- and lower-middle income residents could afford to live in Berkeley—by having some income from our buildings. Unfortunately, the improvements on my building have become so expensive that I will have to sell one unit in order to keep my own unit and then it is questionable whether the taxes will force me to sell the other.

It was while visiting the Planning Department last September with regard to the details of my building improvements, that I first heard about the new ordinance (staff I am told has since been asked not to discuss this ordinance at the counter because it is being revised). It seems a $50,000 to $70,000 tax was not seen as significant enough to notify potentially affected tax paying property owners. There is much concern, however, about notifying renters of potential conversions—this too is important, but where is the balance?

Since then I have been bird-dogging this ordinance, speaking to all but one councilmember, some two and three times, and going to most of the Housing Advisory Committee meetings. I have been trying to learn about the process by which this came about, to make sure there was a public notification of this ordinance and a public workshop on the complex issues involved. What instead has happened is three or four postponements of the Workshop until at last the housing director, the author of the ordinance, ended up with a date with “no available workshop slot” in which extended public opinion could be heard, and an agenda that is so packed with important issues, that a thoughtful hearing is highly unlikely.

The Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) was the reputed source of this ordinance. The commission in large part shares the same ideology as Dr. Barton with two or three major exceptions, so his suggestions are often just rubber stamped by HAC. They look to and frequently ask him for direction, rather than asking their constituents. I was on several occasions the only citizen present. Dr. Barton while setting Berkeley housing policy, has chosen to live in El Cerrito, Contra Costa County, where he is isolated from the tax consequences of his decisions. His latest 22-page treatise, called “Background Information on the Condominium Conversion Ordinance”—part of the May 16 agenda attachments, is a must read for anyone interested in the ideological basis of the Commission and the Berkeley Housing Department. More disturbing have been the attempts to manipulate the minutes and the agenda of these meetings to try to avoid a Condo Conversion Commissioner’s Workshop at HAC. Since the minutes are published by the housing staff, it is only with an extremely vigilant Michael St. John and Marie Bowman that most funny business has been avoided and the truth has come out. (This is not to denigrate the insight brought to bear by Jesse Arreguin and some other commissioners who share Steve Barton’s stance.) Most notably absent at these meetings—is public input, and the lack thereof seems more of a relief than and an interest.

The lack of public input into the formation of this ordinance and its subsequent modifications has been most strongly stated by Darryl Moore. He was the only one with whom I spoke that thought this ordinance should not go forward without a more careful hearing, but Laurie Capitelli, Gordon Wozniak, and Betty Olds seem to support a more inclusive process as well. For most the driving rationale for the passage of this ordinance has been the need to get money into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund which has been decimated by overspending. Why there is overspending is unclear, but one problem appears to be the lack of clearly defined numerical goals for affordable rental housing that the city subsidizes. The demand for affordable rental housing with our large student population is obviously a bottomless pit. (The only mandate that the Housing Department currently has is for affordable rental housing. “Ownership” is seen as de facto, unaffordable, even though other cities in California have programs to bring as many people into ownership positions as possible.) Berkeley is creating a divided city of homeowners who pay the property taxes and renters who have the numerical power to pass ordinances. If we are really concerned about diversity in this city, we should be concerned also about programs for different economic levels of home ownership as well as affordable rentals—with numerical goals and limits of spending on both.

With home ownership in Berkeley at about 40 percent, there is a need for affordable ownership opportunities which this ordinance could help ameliorate. The ordinance as it is currently written will only exacerbate disparity, making condominiums all that much more expensive. By allowing conversion to condominiums in smaller buildings without the fees, the city would still be bringing in transfer tax revenues and increases in assessed property values, but simultaneously it could help current Berkeley renters move into ownership positions: market rate and potentially subsidized through the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. If these smaller buildings are not granted conversion exception, those who want will simply sell them as tenants-in-common. The city has much to gained in the clearer title of condominiums as well as money from HUD through their incentive programs.

The inclusionary housing element of the current ordinances has generated more affordable rentals subsidized by the developers, the university has built more units, and private developers have built more market rate rental units, but there has not a comparable increase in affordable ownership possibilities.

In short, the City Council should not pass this ordinance in its current form. This ordinance needs much more work before it sees the light of day. Let’s make Berkeley a city in which its inhabitants have a financial stake in the city, as well as a say in the city—it will lead to more economically sound policy, a benefit to all.

You are invited to a platform convention for Berkeley progressives to prepare for next November’s election. The convention will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 20 at Unitarian Universalist Hall and Cedar and Bonita streets.

It has been a long time since Berkeley’s progressive community has had a broad-based coalition to represent us. This year, however, we are building an open Progressive Coalition Convention. Our first job will be to write progressive platform and principles for Berkeley. You are invited to help endorse and amend these platforms this Saturday.

In July we will have an open convention to choose candidates.

You will be joined by people who are seeking to “promote a more equitable economic and social life in our city, and to enhance social justice, ecological sustainability and democratic co-operation on every level.”

There are at least five reasons why progressive Berkeley needs a united political convention.

1. Unity. If we are not united, if we run more than one progressive candidate per office, we most likely lose. Four years ago three progressive candidates ran against Gordon Wozniak for the District 8 City Council seat. Against this divided field, Gordon won, with about 43 percent of the vote. He is now the councilmember most opposed to affordable housing and rent control. Progressive candidates to the School Board have also defeated each other. A coalition convention will help us to unite and win.

2. Guidance. We need a united people’s coalition which will hold officials to their principles between elections. Left to themselves politicians tend to “follow the money.” And alas, we have left the City Council alone, so that it has been free to give concessions to developers without extracting the maximum commitment for low cost housing; free to deal in secret with the University without insisting that they pay in full for the services they cost the city, while funding for essential city services is declining. We can guide our officials to do better, but only if Berkeley’s progressive community learns how to co-operate and stay together.

3. Platform. To guide our politicians we first need to agree on principles. This Saturday we will present platform planks in these six areas: fair elections; labor; youth and education; city planning, environment and neighborhood; homelessness and poverty; health and disability. These platforms are works in progress, and they will continue to grow and develop. But we can use our shared principles to question prospective candidates in July, and office holders all year round.

4. Co-operation beyond elections. If we can co-operate for elections, why not for social projects—sustainable, ecological neighborhoods or union organizing, for example? Why not web sites and festivals for communication, or seminars on organizing techniques? We have to get into the habit of creative co-operation.

5. Multi-party coalition. The Coalition Convention which we are building does not belong to any one party or organization, nor is it beholden to any specific candidate. In July we will endorse candidates in an open convention. But we want to preserve the Berkeley tradition of a multi-party progressive coalition, which has been in existence since 1971, and which relates directly to our community rather than to a national machine.

We invite all progressive organizations and individuals to join together. Only a revived progressive coalition can restore us to justice and to sanity, in our city and, eventually, in our nation.

The nation was recently shocked by the beating death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson in a Florida boot camp. Sadly, this is not the first case of a death occurring in a “behavior modification” facility; in fact, there have been three deaths in such facilities throughout the country since December 2005. Although the camp that Anderson attended has recently been shut down, many similar ones are still in operation throughout the country.

You’ve probably seen people from these programs on daytime TV. They’re the “drill sergeants” that yell at kids until they break down (at least that’s all they do on live TV). They say that their version of “tough love” is completely safe, and effectively treats problems such as defiance and drug use. The evidence shows otherwise.

One hundred and nineteen deaths have been reported due to treatment received in these facilities. Many are caused by asphyxiation due to the use of restraints. These are not typical handcuff restraints, as you may be thinking. Some of these cases have involved arms being twisted behind the back to the point of breaking and staff members lying or sitting on top of the child for upwards of 30 minutes. Restraints are commonly used to punish such horrendous offenses as talking out of turn and making eye contact with another student. It should be noted that restraints have caused at least 30 of the 119 deaths.

First-hand accounts from students and former staff members of these facilities are equally disturbing. Their statements and experiences make these facilities seem less like boot camps and more like Abu Ghraib. Stress positions, beatings, hog-tying, humiliation (including making students soil themselves), and sexual abuse are among the charges.

Fox News ran a three-part expose last year on one of the main groups of facilities that operates under the name of WWASPS, or World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools. The former president of WWASPS admitted under oath, in WWASPS v. PURE, that abuse “probably” happens. In the same court case the current president of WWASPS, Ken Kay, stated that most allegations of abuse are not investigated. He further explained that because these children are not the typical “college prep type,” sexual relations between staff members and students may not constitute abuse. For those who doubt this, the court transcripts are available at www.isaccorp.org. Much of the other information given above can also be verified at that site, as well as at www.caica.org.

With all of this information readily available, one would think that the government would be investigating these programs or would have legislation regulating them. However, despite requests from Congressman George Miller (D-California), the Justice Department has refused to investigate. Senate and Congressional hearings have not been held, either. How can steroid abuse in professional baseball warrant a Senate hearing while the deaths of 119 children and the abuse of many others is completely ignored?

These facilities are not safe, plain and simple. Until there is some form of oversight, the abuses will continue, and the death toll will rise. If you know of a child enrolled at one of these facilities, do everything in your power to get them out. Their life may depend on your action.

Robert Reynolds is the president of the National Youth Rights Association (www.youthrights.org).

Wednesday morning, April 5, Doug Henwood, editor of the Left Business Observer, posted an interesting poll report on the list of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). Doug found that someone had spent a lot of time and money polling people in dozens of countries on whether or not they believe capitalism is the best economic system. The poll found that a majority of the people surveyed worldwide said yes. But what intrigued Doug was the ranking in support: China (1), India (2), the United States (3) etc. China and India are booming within the capitalist world economy as production, as well as service industries runaway from their native lands, slash work forces and seek out the cheap labor the two population giants have to offer. But in both China and India the disparity of income between rich and poor is huge and a majority of the population is still rural, living under extreme economic pressure. In his posting Doug pointed out that, unlike the United States, most people in China and India do not have access to telephones. As a result any pretense that a telephone survey is a random sample of the general population in China or India, is just that, a pretense.

Those results may be an accurate reflection of the views of the successful upwardly mobile urban class that is tearing up the asphalt and benefiting from the exceptional economic growth. But the reported results can’t represent the opinions of the people of those nations in general because the typical person wasn’t eligible to be polled. In the United States it might be a different story, reflecting the spell (or delusion) that Americans have been put under due to U.S. military and economic supremacy after World War II. That period of unequal prosperity for the U.S. has ended as real wages are falling for most workers—despite the still large strata making six-figure salaries—while living costs skyrocket in key areas of economic necessity (housing and health care in particular). But old loyalties die hard and few people know much about the economic causes of the World Wars, including the one that the United States has just begun.

This poll on capitalism has me wondering who put up the money to poll tens of thousands of people (costing at minimum $100,000 to $200,000) to see if capitalism still holds sway in the hearts and minds of people? Because even asking the question implies that someone is worried. Of course, they ought to be. We’ve got Ken Lay and his crowd, Abramoff and his crowd, Mr. Delay and his staff, Mr. Cheney’s Scooter. Most of these guys are going to jail but they are sort of the advance guard, stand ins for a system run amok with thievery via de-regulation and the de-legitimization of law, fairness or social concerns. As if that weren’t enough we have the legitimization of wars of aggression, government sponsored terror and torture, the seizings and renditions and torture of people, often innocent, who don’t have to be tried or charged or even permitted to defend themselves in a court. And now the scapegoating of the undocumented, as if Congress didn’t have their hands full taking all that money from lobbyists. The social and cultural fabric of Capitalism is obviously in trouble and that’s why the Right wing has been called forth to insist that we not say the word capitalism, but to call it liberalism. The problems are all due to “liberals” and “liberalism.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I do agree that liberalism is an aspect of capitalism and a liberal politician is not necessarily more honest than a conservative. But it sure isn’t liberalism that spawned Ken Lay or the rest of the rampant dishonesty, selfishness, deceit, and moral depravity that the Religious right rails against. It’s the damned trillions in profits and its insatiable appetite to eat the world up—eating up all our decency and turning our culture into an internecine web of gang warfare. And just to make the point that liberalism isn’t quite what it claims to be here’s the state of Massachusetts—this very same day—one of the most politically liberal states, announcing a wonderful solution to the health care crisis. They are going to waste God knows how many millions to create a new bureaucracy that will tell every person how much they must pay for private health insurance (partially subsidizing the poor) and then give their folks differing qualities of insurance based upon this means testing. Not only will Massachusetts thus institutionalize inequality in health care, they’re calling it “health care for all” (co-opting the slogan of the national health insurance single payer movement) while guaranteeing more profits to the health care industry; not only will Massachusetts waste vast sums on an unneeded state bureaucracy that will burden and tie down the poor; but in a fitting move, they will make it a punishable crime to fail or refuse to pay whatever they tell you must pay.

No, capitalism is not everlasting, impenetrable, nor even stable. And it should not surprise any of us that some folks with big bucks are worried. What I think they are worried about is that the W card instead of clearing up some of the ambiguities of power that liberalism reflected in the era of incredible U.S. economic worldwide expansion, has had the opposite affect. It has narrowed the prerogatives and increased the instability of U.S. capitalism. Even the now stagnated Iraq war, which temporarily forestalled a major U.S. depression by some years, seems to have left the United States no options but to pursue other more definitive invasions, so as to leave no doubt about U.S. power, control of oil resources, and stability. Of course, a brief contemplation leads to the conclusion that more aggression will not stabilize the situation at all. And so there is no where to go, except to poll and wonder how long the people are going to stay loyal. My guess is, not very long. But I could be wrong.

Marc Sapir is the executive director of Retro Poll (www.retropoll.org).

I’m a Republican sympathizer you see. Barbara Lee doesn’t speak for me and I have never voted for her either and don’t intend to. While I still am a registered Democrat, I have been voting Republican ever since the mid ’90s. I think my last vote for a Democrat was for Bill Clinton over Bob Dole.

The Democrats just seemed so boring and out of it. Stuck with old, tired ideas and all of the tiresome multi-culti orthodoxy of grievance groups combined with plans for more government and more taxes on the “rich,” a category I was disturbed to discover might eventually include me. The parasitic relationship of public employee unions with the Democratic party was as disheartening as was the excitement with which the Left greeted each new edict from the bench setting forth how our society is to improve whether we like it or not. The capper of course was the Left’s unwillingness to engage in the war on terror. A war that is defending all that the Left holds dear from a very real threat to take it all away.

I cheered Newt and the boys when they managed to sweep out the decrepit Democratic ancient regime in 1994 using the Contract with America. I marveled at how politics can sometimes effect real change when the GOP managed to force Bill Clinton to sign the much needed welfare reform act and the deficit fell to zero. I had high hopes when conservatives finally seized the Senate and promised, with a Republican in the White House, to effect real change.

However, I am feeling a bit disillusioned right now. There is nothing quite like the disappointment of true political love being truly jilted. The last important thing the conservative Congress did was pass President Bush’s tax cuts which not only staved off a recession but set the table for the fine economic performance we have enjoyed for the past several years. Since then nada, zip, zilch. The Congress has descended into the mire of wild pork barrel spending; lobbying disgrace, an obvious interest in power over principle and worse has accomplished absolutely nothing in years. Just now we are being treated to the absurd spectacle of election year pandering over immigration and gasoline prices at the same time. I had thought that virtue would win out a bit longer before the rot set in.

The Founders really were wise and I now plan to take heart and refuge in that wisdom. They created a carefully modulated system of governance that responds to the wishes of the electorate in subtle combinations. For example, should the people wish to have change at an accelerated pace they can place the presidency and the Congress in the hands of the same party and over time the Supreme Court will join that structure. If the electorate wishes to modulate the pace of change then one house of Congress can be returned to control by the opposition. And in the event that the people don’t like the direction government is taking then both houses of Congress can oppose the president and the pace of change stops altogether.

It seems to me that to enforce a penalty on the GOP in Congress for accomplishing nothing over the past several years and completely losing its intellectual bearings and wasting the public purse that a period of divided government is called for. This is hard for me to say, but I think that it would be for the best if Democrats take back control of the House in November. Now, I do admit that the specter of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House may be enough to cause many voters to blanch. However, this would be an ideal way to force the GOP to reconsider what it really wants to do. It may also give the Democrats a chance to think about what they can offer going forward. More of the same won’t cut it for either party. The Senate, and its control over presidential appointments is too important to sacrifice in this cleansing operation, but let’s focus on paralyzing the government for a while so as to lessen the chances that Congress will do any more harm than it already has.

This November, I still can’t vote for Barbara Lee, but I won’t vote Republican either.

Alan Swain was born in Berkeley and hold a masters degree from Columbia’s School of International Affairs.

I’ve been to a few neighborhood meetings about the Ashby BART lot and what to do with it and it’s always the same old same old; affordable housing, height limits, density, the Flea Market, whether to build there or not, who gets the grant money. The people who are steering the meetings have their own agendas. They are always very negative and about what we can do, or about what we will be allowed to do. Height and density, affordable housing and low-income housing always come up. Talk about doing something different is stymied. “We can’t have a 20 story high-rise because….

And then there are all the reasons why: We can’t have this and we can’t have that. And then there is this guy there with all the reports and all the data supporting his politically correct directive about the project. The way it looks now, we are planning another Salvo Village. All this has nothing to do with what the neighborhood needs.

What this neighborhood needs is jobs. Except for the Berkeley Bowl, South Berkeley has squat as far as economic vitality goes. We don’t have University Avenue, Shattuck Avenue, Solano Avenue, or Fourth Street. All the development money seems to go to downtown and north. What we have here is a dying Flea Market that’s trying to hang on to it’s home at the Ashby BART parking lot. Any economic vitality that used to be here was destroyed by the BART development.

We are desperate to have something happen here so we camouflage the project by using words like low income or affordable housing. We want you to think that it will be housing for police, firemen, and other city workers. How sad! Police and firefighters are not going to bring their families to live in south Berkeley. This is a high-crime neighborhood.

Some grant money has been dangled if front of the various community factions and they are spending their time arguing over who gets it. It’s a waste of time. All the parameters for building have been stated and outlined by the city. It looks like a Salvo Village.

Building a mundane housing development is not what this neighborhood needs. Why can’t we shine? Why can’t we build something exciting here Why can’t we build something that’s really worth building and that does something for the neighborhood instead of some mundane block of housing?

I mention Hotel and I get “it can’t happen.” I mentioned MacDonald’s to a few people and the response I got was like I said a dirty word. “You can’t bring a MacDonald’s in here, it wouldn’t be good for those people.” Who is to tell us what we can eat, and what we can do with our community. A while back we were thrown a few scraps of community development money, and what it was used for was to put in cute streetlights. The streets are empty at night.

To make it clear about whom the city thinks we are and what we are. There were some planters built into the sidewalks south of the BART lot, on Adeline. The planters had seats going around them for people to sit on. So, the people started using them to sit on, and the city got scared, and fixed them so no one can use the seats. I don’t know what they had in mind when they built them. I do know they had no idea who was really going to use them. This is not suburbia where moms are going to be hanging out with their strollers and tow headed kids.

Planners have some kind of utopian idea about how things should be. It’s almost like the “White Man’s Burden” and so the people who come in to direct our meetings and guide us have no idea about how things really are. They just want to help us. They want us to be politically correct. They want us to be healthy. They want us to eat the right foods, and they want us to have housing that conforms to their idea of neatness and order. Thank you! It’s not a cutesy neighborhood. It never was. That doesn’t mean it can’t be exciting.

Personally, I think there should be a 20-story office, hotel and condo project built there. It should have affordable housing, a mall with room for some restaurants and places to hang out, and anything else the people from the community want. A lot of the construction jobs should go to the community and it should be sensitive to community needs. The Berkeley Flea Market should be part of the project, and we should try to get the Derby Street Farmers Market to be part of it also. How about Ashby Plaza with the Hotel Ashby?

Who would use a Hotel on the BART lot? The answer is, anybody who wants to visit Berkeley or the East Bay using BART. It is centrally located, close to Alta Bates hospital, and could become the hub of a public transportation system. Things are not going to be the same when gasoline costs $6.00 and $7.00 a gallon. There’s a hotel and convention center planned for downtown. Why can’t we have our little piece of the action? A hotel would certainly bring jobs into the neighborhood. An exciting project here would certainly turn things around.

c is the owner of the Berkeley Musical Instrument Exchange, located across from the Ashby BART for 31 years.

President Bush nominated General Hayden as CIA director. Due to his link to the president’s illegal surveillance operations some object. He defended circumventing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act stating that compliance involved too much “looping paperwork.” He appears to have no problem with the fourth amendment. His ability to break the law and then to defend these actions before the press and congress make him the perfect candidate. The CIA has institutionalized law breaking and it needs a director who can continue this record. A brief look at CIA history is illustrative.

The CIA has been repeatedly involved in regime change. In 1953 it overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran. In 1954 the CIA ousted the Guatemalan president. In 1963 and then again in 1968 the CIA sponsored coups that brought the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein to power in Iraq. In 1965 the CIA brought General Suharto to power in Indonesia. Immediately after this coup over 500,000 Indonesians were massacred. In 1973 the CIA assisted General Pinochet in overthrowing the elected government of Chile. Of course these coups were only a small fraction of the regime changes fostered illegally by the CIA.

The CIA has regularly participated in assassinations. In Operation Phoenix according to a 1971 congressional report, the CIA assisted South Vietnam to murder about 20,000 Vietnamese opponents of the South Vietnam regime. In the Congo, Patrice Lumumba was murdered. In both the Iraqi coups and the coup in Indonesia, the CIA furnished lists of “leftists” to the death squads.

The CIA has also been involved in covert wars in Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, Central and South America, Africa, etc. which have resulted in the deaths of millions.

And let us not forget about the CIA’s domestic activities. In Operation CHAOS the CIA infiltrated the anti-war and civil rights movements. It regularly opened domestic and foreign mail and conducted domestic spying.

The CIA has not only violated the fourth amendment, but also the first amendment guarantee of a free press. In Operation Mockingbird the CIA recruited news organizations and journalists to become spies and to disseminate propaganda. Some 25 news organizations and 400 journalists became CIA assets as a result.

The above are just a tiny fraction of the CIA’s criminal past but they show why General Hayden is the right man for the job. He will not be bothered by any “looping paperwork” such as the constitution.

Kenneth J. Theisen is an Oakland resident.

Columns

It’s been 14 years since four Democratic women were elected to the Senate in the so-called “year of the woman.” 2006 is shaping up as another historic year for women, as Democrats are poised to take back the House of Representatives and make Nancy Pelosi the first-ever female speaker of the House. At least, that was the prevailing opinion at the annual Emily’s List gathering May 11 and 12 (www.emilyslist.org.)

The attendees at the Washington DC event heard from a number of impressive female candidates for the House and Senate and learned of an intriguing strategy for getting women out to vote in the November 6th elections.

Winning control of the Senate is a stretch for the Democrats. They must hold onto all their contested seats, as well as two seats where Dems are retiring, and win six of the vulnerable Republican seats.

Minnesota has a vacant Senate seat because Democrat Mark Dayton is retiring. There was going to be a contested Democratic primary in September. However Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar proved to be such an impressive candidate that all her main competitors withdrew and she’s likely to win this senate seat.

In the roughly 24 hotly contested House races, Emily’s List mobilized 11 female candidates. Five jumped out as particularly interesting. Francine Busby is running for the congressional seat in California’s 50th Congressional District vacated by convicted Republican congressman Duke Cunningham. The special election will be held on June 6. Busby is running even in a slightly Republican district.

Tammy Duckworth is a retired Army pilot who lost both legs when her helicopter was shot down in Iraq. She got out of Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Dec. 15, returned home to Illinois, and started running for Congress on the 18th. She’s competing for an open Illinois Congressional seat, where incumbent Republican Henry Hyde is retiring. While this is a slightly Republican district, it’s hard to imagine that anyone who meets Duckworth would vote for her opponent and the latest polls show the race is even.

Diane Farrell is running against Connecticut Republican incumbent Christopher Shays. The district leans Democrat, but the race leans Republican.

New Mexico Attorney General Patsy Madrid is running against ultra-conservative incumbent, Heather Wilson. Madrid is the first female, Hispanic Attorney General and running even with Wilson. Lois Murphy is running against Republican Congressman Jim Gerlach in Pennsalvania. Murphy is energetic and articulate and it’s likely that she’ll take this seat.

Ultimately the Nov. 7 election will depend upon which Party gets out its base. Emily’s List will focus its get-out-the-vote resources on five states: Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. This effort will not only help Emily’s list candidates in these states, such as Murphy in Pennsylvania, but it will also have a salutary affect on other key races. In Pennsylvania, there will be a spillover to the senate race where challenger Bob Casey, Jr., is favored to unseat radically conservative Republican Rick Santorum.

The second aspect of Emily’s sophisticated get-out-the-vote program is targeting women voters. One pollster noted that public support for President Bush and the Republican Party is rapidly declining. However, this does not automatically translate into support for Democrats, as voters are turned off on politicians, in general. Therefore, support for Dems is only marginally better than it is for Repugs.

In the 2006 race, the GOP will count on their base turning out in force, particularly the Christian Right. Democrats must mobilize their base whose turnout typically drops 12 to 18 percent in an off-year election. Emily’s List will particularly focus on the eleven races where they have sponsored a candidate. Using sophisticated demographic analysis, they will identify likely supporters, even when they are in overwhelming Republican districts.

Emily’s List operatives tried out their new approach in the May 2 Ohio primary. It produced a victory for Emily’s candidate, Betty Sutton, running in Ohio’s 13th Congressional district, considered a safe Democratic seat in the fall.

The good news coming out of the Emily’s List gathering is that Dems have gathered a good set of candidates and have a strategy to win in November. However, there’s a long road ahead. Despite their dreadful poll numbers and their woeful record, Republicans can be expected to fight tooth and nail to hold onto their majorities in the House and Senate. They may not have public confidence, but they have lots of money. There’s a long way to go before we declare 2006 another year of the woman.

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net.

The seizure of the Oakland Unified School District by the State of California stands as one of the greatest public scandals in Oakland’s history, perhaps surpassed, only by the waterfront land-grab scheme through which the City of Oakland came into being. It is certainly greater, by far, than the Oakland Raiders scandal that has assumed so much of our attention in the past decades. The Raider deal, after all, only took our money. The OUSD seizure took our schools, and in its wake of confusion, has severely jeopardized the future of our children.

How—and why—Oakland’s public schools came to be taken out of the hands of Oakland citizens is still being sorted out; a task made all the more difficult because many of the principal players are still in power, working hard to obscure the sorry history of this sad event.

But if we care to pay attention, the signs are all around us, and are becoming clearer.

In a recent interview with the Tri-City Voice, Newark Superintendent of Schools John Bernard, who is running against Sheila Jordan for Alameda County Superintendent of Schools in the June election, outlined Ms. Jordan’s role in the Oakland school takeover in 2003: “Other county superintendents allow districts to use bond money as a loan when the district is going into the red,” Mr. Bernard told the newspaper. “The incumbent, Sheila Jordan, did not allow Oakland to use the bond money; they went into default and the state took over.”

It’s a key point that ought not be forgotten. To keep from having to accept the state loan, the Oakland School Board had proposed borrowing money from its own construction bonds fund, money that the district would later pay back to itself. The use of the bond money in this way was approved by OUSD’s bond attorneys, who happened to be the bond attorneys for the State of California, and expert in their field. Apparently not expert enough for Ms. Jordan, however, who took it upon herself to ask for a further opinion from State Attorney General Bill Lockyer. Mr. Lockyer declared the bond-borrowing transfer illegal, blocking OUSD from using it to balance the budget and keep Oakland schools in Oakland hands. In a mass community meeting later held at Allen Temple Baptist Church, Ms. Jordan defended her actions by saying that she could not allow the bond transfer because it was illegal.

That’s an interesting opinion, in light of the recent revelation in a Daily Planet article that State Superintendent Jack O’Connell is prepared to announce the sale or long-term lease of more than 9 acres of school properties, including the Paul Robeson Administration Building. The article raised the possibility that the proceeds would be used to pay back the state for the original loan that was forced upon Oakland.

Normally, state law prevents a school district from using the money from the sale of school facilities for anything but the building of new facilities, and so the state loan payback would be illegal. But that law was changed—just for Oakland—in the State Senator Don Perata-written legislation that authorized the state loan and the state takeover of Oakland’s schools. That legislation was later renewed in the massive Omnibus Education Bill that recently came out of the California Senate Education Committee. So if Mr. Perata could get a special law passed for Oakland that allowed the city to pay back the state with money from the sale or lease of the Paul Robeson Administration Building, couldn’t Mr. Perata just as easily have gotten the legislature to pass a law allowing Oakland to save its schools by borrowing from its own construction bond money? And if he could have, why didn’t he?

But, of course, there have been some people who have speculated for a while that sale of the Robeson Administration Building to developers was the motivation behind the Oakland school takeover in the first place.

In late January of 2004, I wrote the following in this column: “And if you believe the rumors—and Oakland is full of rumors this morning—the sale of the Robeson Administration Building is what the Oakland school takeover was all about. In this scenario, real estate developers—under the cover of willing local politicians—would dearly like the 2nd Avenue property for upscale housing. Looking at the dreary neighborhood in which the Robeson Building sits, that wouldn’t seem to make any sense. Unless, that is, you take into account that Oakland is busily making plans to reconfigure the 12th Street–14th Street junction around Lake Merritt, and daylight the creek from the lake to the estuary. Very soon, therefore, the Robeson Building will be waterfront property, sitting on one of the most stunningly beautiful sites in the entire city.

“And so, this rumor goes, developers went to the local politicians, and the local politicians went to Superintendent Dennis Chaconas, trying to get him to agree to the sale. Chaconas would not agree, and it was never thought that such a crazy idea could ever get past an elected Oakland School Board, the Oakland public being as excitable as it is. And so they had to go, Chaconas and the elected School Board, in one great sweep. And under this scenario, the Oakland school takeover was no necessary result of some accidental overbudgeting due to antiquated computer technology but was orchestrated from start to finish. You could make a pretty good case for this, I suppose, starting with County School Superintendent Sheila Jordan sending over her financial advisor (Pete Yasitis) to run the Oakland school finances, continuing with Yasitis developing the teacher pay hike plan that led to Oakland’s overbudgeting, and ending with Jordan being one of the major players in stopping a Chaconas/School Board plan that would have held off the state ‘loan’ and thereby prevent the state takeover. I suppose we could ask Yasitis some interesting questions about this, but he has long since left the building.

“Anyhow, now comes a Sunday article by Alex Katz of the Tribune (and Tribune reporters have been doing some valuable work recently on the Oakland school issue), in which an extended quotation is in order. Talking about what to do with the five Oakland schools set for closure by state-appointed Oakland School Administrator Randolph Ward, Katz writes: ‘Another option would be to move the district’s central offices to one of the sites, making it possible to lease or sell the district’s valuable administration buildings . . . “Right now the whole administration building is up for discussion,” Ward said.—[A]n agenda for a Wednesday closed session meeting includes negotiations between the ‘district and prospective developers and/or owners’ of the district’s headquarters and adjacent buildings.—According to the agenda, the subject of closed session negotiations will be the ‘Price and/or Terms of Payment for Both the Purchase or Lease or Development of some or all of said property.’ State Sen. Don Perata . . . has encouraged the sale of the property, which [Perata] said would make spectacular housing, to help pay down the district’s $65 million loan from the state.’”

Mr. Katz, indeed, was doing some good work writing for the Tribune about Oakland school matters last year, and his voice and experience and insight would have been valuable in sorting out the recent developments concerning the proposed sale or lease of the administration building and surrounding properties. So why hasn’t Mr. Katz spoken up? He hasn’t because earlier this year, he was hired by OUSD state-appointed administrator Randy Ward to be OUSD’s Public Information Officer, thus [conveniently] removing Mr. Katz as a potential threat to dig into these matters and reveal them to the public.

Perhaps you think this was just a coincidence, and the powerful don’t make moves like this to cover their tracks. Perhaps. But who’s being naïve now, Kay?

Who lost Oakland’s schools, and why? The full story has yet to be told, in part, perhaps, because the story has yet to be finished. It’s continuing to happen, right now, right in front of us, a public scandal for the ages.

Atop Rose Hill Cemetery, I gaze out at the undulant hillsides and narrow canyon of Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. I share this peak with two hundred former 19th century residents—coal miners, their wives and children. Little remains as testament to their settlement, but their voices stir the trees. Sojourn at Black Diamond Mines to revisit past glories and relish present verdant splendor.

With almost 6,000 acres and 65 miles of trails, this is a vast parcel of preserved land, ideal for hiking, picnicking and observing wildlife. Within grassland, foothill woodland, mixed evergreen forest and chaparral, you’ll discover Coulter pine, black sage, desert olive and dudleya providing habitat for over 100 species of birds and common mammals. Add some exotic plantings and a springtime display of wildflowers deserving the attention of Monet and the urge to visit just increases.

Below the surface, Black Diamond Preserve offers a look into the past when coal, and then sand, were mined from its core. The discovery of coal in 1850 drew immigrants from all over the world to mine for “black diamonds.” During 40 years of existence over four millions tons of coal were removed, depleting, not the resource but the workforce. At the end of the coal era, the five boomtowns and their remaining residents packed up and left.

The next chapter in Black Diamond history came in the 1920s when sand mining began to extract high-grade silica used in glassmaking. With better and safer mining techniques, over 1.8 millions tons were removed from underground caverns by the end of World War II, when sand ballast from Belgium usurped the local product.

The East Bay Regional Park District came into the picture in the early 1970s when it acquired land for the preserve. One unfortunate chapter, the party and vandalism era, took place before the land was acquired, leaving its mark, though now less evident, on the mines and cemetery.

Approaching the Preserve on Somersville Road, I felt like I was leaving the world behind me. As the canyon narrowed it drew me forward until I was surrounded only by rural buildings and pristine landscape. I was ready for outdoor exploration. Since it was too early to tour the Visitor Center, I began my exploration with a walk up Nortonville Trail, once Road, to Rose Hill Cemetery. All around me were signs of new life: the tender leaves of trees of heaven emerging through last year’s seed clusters; purple vetch and blue lupine pushing up through thickets of grass; and the sounds of bumblebees, red winged blackbirds and the wind coursing through the foliage.

The Protestant Cemetery stands sentinel over the land’s reincarnation as a park. “Gone but not forgotten” read the stones. Life was precious in the 19th century and often too short. Mining accidents and epidemics of smallpox, diphtheria and scarlet fever took many before their time. Ages on marble and granite tombstones are carved in exact time: Mary Adams lived 49 months and 7 days, Daniel Richards 69 years, 1 month and 22 days. Four children in the Joseph family died before reaching nine years of age; by eight years most were already toiling in the mines. The cemetery remains as testament to the hard lives and the contributions of those who came for a new life.

Even when outside temperatures rise to uncomfortable levels, it’s always a crisp 56-degrees in the epic-size Greathouse Visitor Center, open to both human and canine visitor, whether on foot or on bike. Traverse a long narrow tunnel to experience how 1920s sand miners reached their underground chamber. Small lights strung at head level emit just enough light to examine the timbered walls and ceiling, shale sides and dripping water.

At tunnel’s end, a giant cavern opens up, vast in size and marked with evidence of its past, white areas of the desired silica, orange streaks formed of rust in the less desirable sandstone and black lines of the soot remaining from days when party bonfires burned illegally.

The center is nicely arranged with just enough exhibits, photographs, video and brochures for information, but without distracting from the cavern itself. Handsome wood cases hold vintage Lane’s Honey and Star Wine Vinegar, a sampling of the glassware produced from the mined high-grade silica. Further on, artifacts from the towns of Nortonville and Somersville—marbles, scissors, heavy iron, teapot and lock and key—are familiar in their commonality. Displays of coal samples, common rocks and Preserve wildflowers lend a science-hand. Souvenirs for budding miners include Hazel-Atlas hardhats, hardhat flashlights and park T-shirts and caps.

It’s a short but very scenic walk from the Visitor Center to the Hazel-Atlas Mine portal and the hillside above is a springtime display. Thick shrubs and grasses are polka-dotted with glittering colors: three-toned bush lupine in blue, violet and cream, yellow coreopsis with feathery leaves, red Indian paintbrush and white hemispherical yarrow.

You don’t need to purchase a hardhat and flashlight for the Hazel-Atlas Mine Tour; they’re included with the price of a ticket. You’ll be glad to have them, along with a sweatshirt, for the one-hour walk 400-feet into a restored silica mine. On my tour, park guide Lauren, enthusiastically instructed and entertained us with history, geology and mining techniques.

After locking the gate and brassing us in, the park guide showed us a narrated slide show describing precarious coal mining in 18-inch coal rooms. With an image of today’s park on screen, Lauren pointed out reminders of Somersville, like level areas and piles of rocks. The walking tour focused on sand mining techniques, in which I learned about adits, stopes, scaling rods, room-and-pillar mining, slusher buckets and fossils of ancient ghost shrimp in the sandstone walls.

Prolong your visit with a temperature-warming hike for further mine tunnel exploration or scene stealing views. Follow the Stewartville Trail past grassland and foothills to Prospect Tunnel, excavated in 1860. Use your flashlight to explore the two hundred feet of tunnel open to the public. Another option is Railroad Bed Trail, parallel to and above Somersville Road providing you with an overview of park terrain. Most trails connect up with others for loops and extensions; I used my trail map for reference.

Black locust trees planted by miners in the 1800s at the Lower Picnic Area shaded my final stop. Springtime added the perfume of white floral clusters decorating lacy leaves and age-old weathered trunks. Here I reflected on miners, coal, silica, wildflowers, rolling landscape and the importance of open space in our lives. Explore Black Diamond Mines Preserve, and honor this turn-of-the-century mining landmark and present day refuge.

IF YOU GO:

GETTING THERE: Take Hwy 4 to the Somersville Road exit in Antioch. Drive south (into the hills) on Somersville Road to the Preserve entrance.

Lying northwest of Hopkins Street between Gilman and Colusa, the Peralta Park tract straddles Berkeley and Albany across Codornices Creek. Built up in the 1920s, the neighborhood presents to the eye a sea of low stucco bungalows among which one can pick out a handful of Victorians.

Of the latter, three average-sized Queen Annes may be found along Hopkins Street. The other two, however, are giants boasting remarkable architectural features. Relics of a grander era, they stand as a reminder of the larger-than-life people who harbored bold visions for this land.

In the public domain until 1820, the area was part of the 44,800-acre Rancho San Antonio granted to Luís María Peralta for his services to the Spanish Crown. In 1842, Peralta divided the lands among his four sons, and José Domingo Peralta (1795–1865) received the portion that today comprises Berkeley and Albany from Alcatraz Avenue to El Cerrito Creek.

Having his pick of many prime locations for his home, Domingo settled on the bank of Codornices Creek, where he erected a 30x18-foot adobe (removed after the 1868 earthquake) and, in 1851, a two-story frame house (moved to the nearby Schmidt tract in 1872 and torn down in 1933, when UC owned the tract).

Had these structures survived in the original location, their address would be 1304 Albina Ave.

During the Gold Rush, cattle robbers, squatters, and fortune hunters whittled away Domingo’s possessions, and by 1853, he was forced to sell most of his land, reserving 300 acres around his house. Taxes and legal fees ate up the remaining acres by 1868.

Sixty of those acres were acquired by William Chapman Ralston (1826–1875), the boldest speculator on the Pacific coast, founder of the Bank of California, director of the Central Pacific Railroad, and builder of San Francisco’s fabled Palace Hotel. Never one to do anything on a small scale, Ralston was the first to have visions for Peralta Park, but his untimely death in the aftermath of a rush on his bank stopped any development for a while.

The executor of Ralston’s estate fraudulently used the land as collateral for an $8,000 loan from the California Insurance Company. When he defaulted on the loan, the company, founded by Caspar Thomas Hopkins in 1861, seized the land, and Hopkins set about looking for a buyer. In 1887 he found a fabulous one.

The man who reputedly peeled off $32,000 for a deed was Maurice Strelinger, aka M.B. Curtis (c. 1850–1920), a wildly successful actor who made his name playing the lead in the comedy “Sam’l of Posen” (more on him in a future story). Strelinger’s visions were as grand as Ralston’s. He planned an elegant subdivision, anchored by the luxurious, multi-turreted Peralta Park Hotel.

The hotel was to be surrounded by large houses on spacious lots, circled in turn by medium-sized houses on standard lots. Always highly leveraged, Strelinger recruited investors from among his San Francisco business and theatre connections, and some of them bought parcels and erected homes. In all, thirteen houses were built on the tract, including Strelinger’s own home at 1505 Hopkins Street. Six of the houses went up in 1889, all constructed by Lord & Boynton, who in the same year also built the Niehaus Brothers’ West Berkeley Planing Mill and George C. Pape’s East Berkeley Planing Mill.

Most of the six Peralta Park houses built in 1889 contained between eight and ten rooms. The largest belonged to the San Francisco physician Robert Macbeth and was located on a large creekside parcel on the east side of Albina Avenue. On the west side, also on outsize parcels, stood the houses of Anita Fallon and Julius Alfred Lueders. Although both of the latter survived, only the Lueders house at 1330 Albina remains on its original site.

The house was designed by Ira A. Boynton, who was related to Moses Chase, a former seafarer and forty-niner known to have been the first squatter on Antonio María Peralta’s land and the first American settler in Oakland. A New Englander, Boynton came to Berkeley in 1877 and lived on Berkeley Way. Among the houses he built locally are 2328 Channing Way (1889) and the Edward Brakenridge house (1892) at 1410 Bonita Avenue.

In 1895, Boynton’s daughter’s wedding took place in Joseph Clapp’s cottage at 2007 Berkeley Way. It is not known whether Boynton designed this Gothic Revival cottage, commonly known as the Morning Glory House (built c. 1878), but it’s possible, since Clapp was another transplanted New Englander.

For a while, Boynton was associated with Horace Kidder (later of the contracting firm Kidder & McCullough), but in the mid-1890s he was drawn by the building boom in Alaska and settled in Douglas. He died in Seattle in 1920.

Boynton’s client on Albina Ave. was one of the San Franciscans lured to Berkeley by Strelinger. According to his daughter, Mrs. Frieda Frohwerk, Julius A. Lueders moved his family from San Francisco to Peralta Park because his wife wanted to live in the country. Born in Germany, he “had no use for the Prussian military system, so came to San Francisco in 1877.”

The Berkeley Daily Gazette columnist Hal Johnson interviewed Mrs. Frohwerk in 1947, at which time she divulged that her father “had learned the perfumery business in Germany by serving a four-year-apprenticeship to a leading chemist.

He brought to California several formulas along with his family. In a few months he had worked up quite a business in perfumes in San Francisco. Interested in the life insurance business, he started his own life insurance company. And because he was particularly careful whom he insured, he prospered.”

Mrs. Frohwerk didn’t tell Johnson that her father was secretary of the Pacific Endowment League, a real-estate firm whose reputation was less than a stellar, and that the family finances were kept on an even keel through the exertions of her mother, Anna, a stern woman who operated a dress shop in San Francisco.

The Lueders house cost $4,900 and was second only to the Macbeth house, which came in at $6,900. In addition to ten rooms on the first and second floors, there was a third-story attic with four rooms and surmounted with a bell-shaped cupola. The three-acre lot was a block deep, extending from Albina to Fleurange Ave. (now Acton). The amenities included a gazebo, a large garden, a barn, and a well house with windmill. A gas plant on the premises provided illumination. The well water was still being used in 1947.

Julius and Anna Lueders had four children: Hilda, Frieda, Walter, and Edgar. Hilda was principal of the West Berkeley Kindergarten until she married George Bruns. Thereafter she helped her husband run the D.H. Bruns General Merchandising store and post office on the corner of San Pablo and University. Frieda attended the Sprague School in Peralta Hall (formerly the Peralta Park Hotel) before becoming a teacher in the West Berkeley Kindergarten. When Sunset Telephone & Telegraph introduced 24-hour telephone service, Frieda became the night operator.

Later she advanced to chief operator, and eventually went to work as a county employee. In middle age she married the carpenter William Frohwerk. Neither Walter nor Edgar married. Walter worked as a bookkeeper and Edgar as a mechanic. Both continued living with their mother at 1330 Albina. Walter bought the Bruns store, renamed West Berkeley Hardware. He died in 1924, and Edgar continued running the store until his own death in 1971.

In 1972, the Lueders house was acquired by Thomas Roe and his partner, who lovingly restored it, preserving the original first-floor rooms. They added a second turret on the south end, glazed the gazebo with windows salvaged from a Mills College demolition, and constructed a showcase kitchen, largely with salvaged materials. Still a work in progress, the house is one of the finest Victorians in the East Bay.

Everything ages and everything dies. It’s sad but it’s certainly true and no less for water heaters than for people, cats and presidential administrations. The funny thing about water heaters and electrical panels is that we don’t tend to think of them as getting old in the same way that we think about Aunt Martha. We see her getting older and increasingly forgetful, despite her being so adorable, even as she searches for her car keys (should she still be driving?)

Actually, water heaters and furnaces, garbage disposers and, yes, foundations have life cycles just like Aunt Martha and your dog, Mr. Buggles. I think we all need to see these things a bit more in this way since it seems so very widespread that people tend to express real surprise when I tell them that an item is getting old or is ready for the heap. “Well, it’s worked just fine, all these years” they sometimes say and sure as this may be true, it doesn’t take into account the fact that said item, the furnace for example, may have commenced to leak flue gases into the living space.

Yes it still comes on and heats the house but there may be any number of unseen things that aren’t working as they should or may be nearing a point at which it is unlikely that they will function at all.

Let’s start with the general issue of wear and function. When devices, such as the breakers in electrical panels, are new, we can eliminate from the equation most aberrant performance based on wear.

As such devices age, they are subject to a range of natural forces. A spring loses it’s springiness from metal fatigue, corrosion forms on parts, which may play a critical role, things get dirty and fail to operate smoothly from the contamination of foreign particles, heat or cold may gradually wear upon parts and cause them to malfunction.

There are too many natural forces to list here but you get the general idea. Even if you do nothing else to a breaker, a dishwasher or a phone jack, over time it’s going to be exposed to elements that will wear upon it and eventually prevent it from functioning properly.

In the case of the electrical breaker, the spring metal inside is wearing from being sprung as well as from the heat created by electricity running through it. Over time, it will become less responsive and may eventually fail to work altogether.

Another reason that things eventually want to be replaced is that they are failing to take advantage of innovations in science and technology that we come to consider either highly desirable or baseline essentials. Most of us would not drive a car that didn’t have a seat belt despite the fact that they were not present in cars 40 years ago.

One might say, “Hey the car drives, what are you complaining about” and most would respond, “Well, my life is at risk without one and I don’t want to drive without it.” Increasingly, we have come to feel this way about air bags, tempered glass and ABS brakes as well, despite the fact that you don’t really have to have them to drive.

The same is true in your house. I wouldn’t live in a house that didn’t have smoke detectors because they exist and can save my life, as well as the lives of my two girls and my wife. I also have a carbon monoxide tester running 24/7 in the hall. Same reason. It’s not essential but it’s available and it might save our lives.

This logic extends to all the equipment in the house and to elements of the house itself, such as the roofing, the siding and the foundation. Some older systems simply lack the advantage that modern advances have to offer. Most houses around here weren’t built with enough bolts or enough inherent bracing to survive a large earthquake and most modern houses were.

This is one example where an alteration can update us to a close equivalent of modern safety standards. This is true of some other systems as well.

Single glazed window sashes can often be replaced with double glazed replacements providing better heat conservation and sound reduction but this isn’t really a safety issue. On the other hand, an old electrical breaker (I keep hitting that note) can, in my opinion become far less reliable over time and can usually be replaced, even within an existing panel to improve fire safety.

An older heat exchanger in a furnace can also, often, be replaced when it has become worn or cracked although I would argue that the additional cost of an entirely new furnace is so well offset by the many advantages that come with a newer unit that a repair is rarely worthwhile. New furnaces are not only far more efficient than older ones (PG&E told us last October that energy prices were expected to rise by 71 percent in response to Katrina), but also offer a range of improved safety features as well as simplified flues that can eliminate costly and ugly installations.

Many older features of houses are extremely desirable and I sorely wish that modern builders would more frequently take lessons that present themselves visibly in so many of our older houses and exploit them in what it built today.

Nonetheless, old floor furnaces are dangerous, smelly, inefficient and best replaced by the myriad newer choices that modern technology has brought us. Similarly, a breaker panel in a convenient location has real advantages over a small fuse panel that’s buried at the back of a clothes closet.

If we all tended to think of our houses the same way we think of our computers we might be a little better off. That ancient furnace in the basement is a hard drive that’s skipping and only has 20 megabytes of memory. With that old wiring of yours and one outlet per room, it take you 30 seconds to download a page off the internet and those old Windows of yours … Well, you know.

Gardening is like fishing in some ways. You can do it for dinner, or just for the halibut; you can do it for purely recreational or aesthetic reasons, or both. It can give you peace and relaxation, or vein-popping frustration. It helps a lot to know the natural history of the place and of your target. You can do it for very little money, or you can go broke buying fascinating tools and gadgets.

I’m a collector at heart but also nearly broke most of the time, so I hover between the extremes. I have more tools than many folks because I worked as a pro for some years. But my favorites, the reliables I use most often, can mostly fit on my jeans pockets plus one hand for the long ones. It’s a good idea for a new gardener to start with the basics and then add the equivalents of Victorian specialty silverware, the asparagus tongs and the left-handed runcible spoons, as the garden progresses.

The two things I always have in my pockets are my Felcos and my hori-hori.

I don’t endorse commercial brands often, but Felco brand pruning shears are the only ones worth buying. They’re a big investment at first—in the $50.00 range—but if you don’t lose them they’re the last pair you’ll ever have to buy, because every part is replaceable at a reasonable price. Blades are easy to sharpen, and after a few years of hard use or abuse you’ll pay under ten bucks—usually about six—for a new one. Felcos come in many sizes and configurations, including left-handed, and you really need to try them on like shoes. It’s worth the effort; you’ll know when you have the right fit.

Between the fit and the sharpness, you’ll save damage to your joints and other vulnerable bits, and to the plants you cut. I keep my Felcos sharp with a couple of inexpensive hones that look and work like emery boards; got them at a cutlery shop.

A hori-hori is a Japanese farmers’ tool that’s become popular here too. It’s a broad, heavy knife, not terribly sharp, with a scooped central channel and one serrated edge. It has a wooden grip and a full tang: the metal of the blade runs all the way through, the handle. This makes it very strong; I frequently use mine by sticking the blade under a stubborn weed and stepping on the handle, to lever the thing out. I’ve never damaged a hori-hori this way.

In fact, I’ve never damaged one significantly at all. This includes the one that spent at least a year under a compost pile. When Saint Anthony finally got around to answering those prayers, the hori-hori was rusted and the handle just a bit loose. That full tang meant the loose handle doesn’t compromise its function one bit, and the rust came off with a few uses, so I didn’t even have to scour it. In fact, I used it brutally enough to wedge some clay under the grip and it’s not loose anymore.

In future columns I’ll talk about bigger and weirder tools, and the places I like to get them.

It is Mother’s Day and I am motherless. I am a mother. I have been childless as well.

My own mother died in my arms on Aug. 25, 2003, of breast cancer. I didn’t think I could do that; sit with someone, much less my own mother, as she transitioned from this world into the next. As each breath became deep and heavy, she looked directly into my eyes with an intensity I will never forget. I experienced such a strong connection that it seemed as though I were transported to another plane. I suddenly felt strong and confident. I felt elevated, as though a blessing had been laid upon me. I realized in that instant that it was an honor to be chosen to assist my mother through her process.

“It’s all right, Mom,” I said with authority I didn’t know I possessed. As her breath became even more labored, her eyes widened. She seemed to be startled with the realization that it was finally happening, that this was it. I watched her still beautiful face as she worked hard to breathe her spirit out of her once lovely, now useless body. The cancer had spread to her bones and was quite painful.

“It’s OK, Mom,” I said, attempting to reassure her that she needn’t be afraid, for herself or for us—those she was leaving behind. “Just relax, Mom. It’s OK.”

Meanwhile, my father had come home from work. Having been happily married for 53 years, he was terrified of losing his soul mate. We took turns holding her; he, trying to urge her to come back and me, trying to assist her in letting go. As my father left their bedroom to open the door for the hospice nurse, I continued to cradle my mother in my arms. And then she left.

Eighteen years ago, I held my firstborn child, Arianne, in my arms, in total awe of the miracle of childbirth. All of the pain, fear and shock handily delivered to my entire system was well worth it. All of it. I had been initiated into the world of motherhood and for the first time in my life I knew what it meant to love unconditionally, completely and without reservation. Three months later, Arianne would also leave my arms, a victim of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. I was consumed with overwhelming pain and depression. I had now been initiated into the world of grief. I had not known what true suffering was before I lost my child. I had not a clue.

With my mother, the parting had been expected. Even so, it was painful; a tremendous loss. The kind where you think: “I wish I had said... I wish we had done...I hope she knew...”

With my daughter, her parting was so unexpected and shocking, it was all I could do to hold myself up. I didn’t know what to do with my now empty arms, my full, hardened breasts. I was completely lost and distraught. I wondered; am I still a mother? Or was I a mother for only three months and am no longer?

Two years later, I gave birth to my second daughter, who is now a junior at Berkeley High School. Although I didn’t sleep until she was about two years old, her happy, beautiful spirit brought me back to the joys of motherhood. She is 16 and my son is 11 and today is Mother’s Day and I am very grateful to be one.

My children asked me what I wanted for Mother’s Day and I told them that I wanted three things: I wanted them to clean the house; for my daughter to help her brother with his math homework and that they accompany me to church. Well ... what I got was half of a clean house, one third of the homework accomplished and we all slept through church. I drove my son to his playoff basketball game while my daughter and her boyfriend decorated the house with handmade cards and flowers. We came home, I cooked their favorite spaghetti dinner and they brought me a cake with candles arranged in the shape of a heart.

What I get every day is two wonderful kids with whom I exchange many hugs and “I love yous.” What I try to give is a non-judgmental ear and an open heart and mind. Particularly now, with their parents engaged in the process of divorce, my kids need to know that no one person is all right or all wrong; that there is always room for questions and different points of view.

Life is precious and so tenuous. Too many of us die way too young. To begin each day as though it were not your last, not your first but your very best day—I think that just might be the key. It’s worth a try.

“Do you think you are a nymphomaniac?” is the question that begins A Round-Heeled Woman, My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance, by Elmwood resident Jane Juska.

Now, three years later, Jane has penned a follow-up memoir, Unaccompanied Women: Late-Life Adventures in Love, Sex, and Real Estate, that reads like a comfortable conversation between good friends. It’s as if the author and her readers are strolling down nearby College Avenue, peeking into the storefront windows of Sweet Dreams, ducking in for coffee at Café Roma, eating lunch at La Mediterranee, or waiting in line at the Elmwood Theater while discussing the nymph-o issue, and much more.

In her chatty, no-nonsense style, Jane writes about her life since her first book hit the shelves and caused a stir. Articles in the New York Times and the foreign press, readings at the 92nd Street Y, and in London, appearances on Charlie Rose and The Early Show catapulted Jane into the public eye and made her a self-declared “sexpert” at the ripe, juicy age of 70.

I caught up with Jane at a reading at Mrs. Dalloway’s. The cozy College Avenue bookstore was filled to overflowing with fans eager to hear of Jane’s latest exploits. Like a stand-up comic, or a more easier on the eyes and ears Dr. Ruth, Jane dished. She read chapters from her new book, and entertained with stories about the men she has dated, bedded, lamented, and spurned since A Round-Heeled Woman made the bestseller lists. She kvetched about real estate prices, local and international politics, the closing of Cody’s and Clean-Well Lighted Books, and the necessity and difficulty of finding a well-made, properly shaken martini.

More importantly, she talked about the women she has met since she became a reluctant authority on sex and the over-50 set. At readings and speaking engagements, in letters and e-mails, women have sought her advice, and confessed how they’ve been transformed by her words and actions. Many of these encounters are chronicled in Unaccompanied Women: the well-dressed, sophisticated Persian ladies from Oakland who befriended her and described their difficult upbringings and failed marriages; the 68-year-old woman who went on-line to find a date, fell in love, and then realized she was, after all, content with her former life; the woman who lost (and eventually regained) her heart and her identity to a seemingly charming but ultimately devious man determined to destroy her; the elderly couple who’d fallen in love as teenagers and re-found one another 65 years later. Jane weaves her personal experiences with theirs, chronicling her ups and downs, and her hesitancy to give counsel when her own life feels inadequate and out-of-control.

Since A Round-Heeled Woman went into multiple printings, and was translated into French, Italian, Japanese, and Russian, Jane has been on a roller coaster, heady with excitement, exploration, and, sometimes, disappointment.

Along the way she has gained insight into who she is and what she wants: a stable roof over her head, a diamond or two, and a warm, male body to hold her close, but not too tightly.

Jane has been asked by her fans where to buy dildos, (Good Vibrations), and how to have tantric sex (she doesn’t know). Strangers have requested her guidance on learning to love their overweight bodies and child birthing scars, on how to handle the unexpected departure of a once adored husband and the death of a longtime, beloved spouse.

Jane readily admits she doesn’t have the answers to any of these questions. But by writing down her fabulously naughty and oftentimes painfully awkward journey, she provides encouragement and hope to those who are lonely, confused, and wanting. Like Yogi Berra, whom she quotes in Unaccompanied Women, Jane says firmly and without an apology, “When you come to the fork in the road, take it.”

Lemons aren’t the only fruit trees growing in Berkeley’s streetside strips. Yes, we have some bananas.

Parts of the East Bay and San Francisco are known as “banana belts” because they have slightly higher average temperatures than the rest of the place. It doesn’t take much, just a few degrees Fahrenheit, to tip the balance to a friendly microclimate—most years—for tropical and semitropical plants. The Mission in San Francisco gets more sun than the outer avenues, for an example that’s hardly a surprise.

There’s a sort of nanoclimate strip through Berkeley that, on a good day, might include the neighborhood of the Daily Planet’s office, and a broader swath of East Oakland where people can grow hot peppers and big tomatoes. The banana belts on this side of the bay are, in my experience, less predictable than San Francisco’s unless you have the time to perch on a hill, watch the fog patterns, and hold a finger to the wind all day.

Or you could walk around looking for big bananas. Banana trees.

They aren’t technically trees, of course; they’re even shrubs mostly by courtesy. A banana plant is typically big but the whole thing is herbaceous, not woody. The functional equivalent of a trunk might strike you, if you’ve ever seen one cut down, as a sort of vertical green onion structure of leaves tightly wrapped in more leaves until the whole is strong enough to support a broad umbrella of extravagantly big floppy feather-shaped leaves. These hang along a central midrib in various configurations, depending on the variety of the plant, and generally get shredded into little pennants by the wind.

The Oxford Companion to Food, which I recommend reading if you can heft it, calls this “a neat evolutionary adaptation to lower their wind resistance, for the ‘trunk’ is not as strong as a real tree trunk and risks being blown down.”

Like most adaptations, it’s not perfect, and they get blown down sometimes anyway. Don’t fret; the stalk dies back anyway after flowering and maybe fruiting, and the whole plant retreats to its bulbous tuber. Over a few years, it grows offsets from that cache of energy, and makes its own little grove. Offsets—“pups”—can be separated from the central plant along with some roots, and replanted elsewhere.

What fouls up bananas here is not so much pests as cold, poorly drained clay soils. The plant likes rich, well-drained humus, warmth, and lots of moisture but not soggy root zones.

Even those of us who shop at the Berkeley Bowl or the produce stores on East 14th or whatever they call it this year might be surprised at the variety of bananas in existence. Your basic Cavendish or Gros Michel, the yellow ones you see everywhere, aren’t the half of it; one Georgia grower mentions ripe fruit that can be green, pink, red, orange or purple, and the classic cooking banana, generally labeled “platanos” on grocery shelves and restaurant menus, is best for baking when it’s good and black outside.

Hide color isn’t all that varies. Descriptions of flavors—“sweet but sharp,” “aromatic,” “approaching apple”—make me curious mostly because they’re so vague. I’m not sure that precision would be more helpful, though. Durian has been closely described, as by Alfred Russell Wallace (“… indescribable. A rich butter-like custard highly flavoured with almonds,,, intermingled with it come wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, brown sherry…”) but there’s something to it that no one has quite named, and I can’t either. Good tho’, as Utah Philips says.

Banana flowers, meaning the male part of the inflorescence, and banana leaves have their culinary uses too, cooked or cooked-in. Aside from wrapping sweet rice for desserts, the leaves, used to line a cooking pot, give the rice a nice flavor even when they burn a little on the bottom.

In spite of the assertion that some edible banana varieties can be grown as far north as Kentucky, most of the ones I know personally are decorative. They’re handsome and evocative, and the red and mottled cultivars are spectacular. Still, I wonder if we might give the big corporations as well as the scary Panama Wilt disease a bit of competition by growing our own.

“Till You Find Your Dream” Broadway selections, American folk and popular music by the Cantare Chorale and All Star Singers at 7:30 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$25. 836-0789.

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra at 8 pm at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. www.ypsomusic.net

Hip Hop Festival at 7 p.m. and Dream, El Efe and Company of Prophets at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15 for both shows, or $10 for each. 849-2568.

Storytelling Festival from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area in El Sobrante. Tickets are $11 for a single event, $55 for the entire weekend. 869-4946. www.bayareastorytelling.org

Joe Fischer will discuss his new book “Poker Passion” at 2 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087.

Volti and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra “Our Voices Rise in Song Together” at 4 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way, at Ellsworth. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-771-3352. www.voltisf.org

Organ Music at St. John's with Roberta Gary, University of Cincinatti, in an an all-Bach recital on the Brombaugh organ at 4 p.m. at St. Johns Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Donation $15. Reception follows performance. 845-6830.

Oakland School for the Arts Big Band, Drum Corp, and Percussion Ensemble at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Donations benefit Oakland School for the Arts. 228-3207.

Opie Bellas at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$10. 238-9200.

TUESDAY, MAY 23

FILM

Embracing Diversity Films “Out of the Shadow” a documentary of a woman with paranoid schizophrenia, at 7 p.m. at Albany High School Library, 603 Key Route Blvd. Please enter through gym doors on Thousand Oaks Blvd. Suitable for children over 12. Free. Discussion follows. 527-1328.

Berkeley filmmakers Cliff Orloff and Olga Shalygin return to the public airwaves this weekend with their latest documentary about Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.

Afghanistan’s Fatal Flower, a half-hour look at the opium trade, airs on KQED at Sunday at 2 p.m. and again on KQED World at 9 a.m. and noon on Tuesday, May 23.

Orloff and Shalygin track the production of opium from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the streets of the world’s urban capitals. The path, like the issue itself, is complex, winding through various strata of society.

Though the reins of power have changed hands, Afghanistan is far from the success story the Bush administration would have us believe. The warlords may have exchanged their fatigues for business suits in an attempt to gain public respectability but their practices have apparently changed little, as they still maintain private militias that are funded primarily by the opium trade. And their opulent lifestyles, in marked contrast to the people they claim to represent, can only be funded—in a country where the average income is well below a dollar a day—by illicit activity.

Afghanistan is responsible for 87 percent of the world’s heroin, which may give an idea of just how much money is to be made in the business, and consequently just how strong the allure of the trade is for the country’s poor farmers. One farmer is quoted as saying that a field of poppies can bring in more than 20 times as much money as a field of cotton.

Gold is still the traditional method of storing one’s wealth, but Fatal Flower shows that opium has become far more lucrative. It essentially serves as Afghanistan’s stock market. From farmers and smugglers to politicians and warlords, everyone along the chain of production socks away stockpiles of opium to sell at a later date when the price is high. In a nation of great uncertainty, the illicit opium trade has filled a gaping void, proving to be not just a seductive and lucrative side business, but one of the few sources of economic and cultural stability.

The Sisters, opening today (Friday) at Shattuck Cinemas, is an adaptation of a play by Richard Alfieri, which was in turn derived from Anton Chekhov’s play The Three Sisters. Alfieri himself wrote the screenplay, and that fact may be largely responsible for the film’s undoing.

The Sisters is a highly literate movie, in the sense that its characters are highly literate, highly articulate and endlessly chatty. Other than that, it’s really a simple family drama, examining the threads that bind and constrict three sisters and a brother. But this is not quite your average family. All are somehow involved, like their late father, in academia, or at least in rather academic professions, making them educated, ruthlessly ambitious and more than a little smug.

The story takes place in New York and begins with a birthday party for the baby of the family, a college student whom the two elder sisters have essentially raised. Guests at the party, held in the university’s faculty lounge, include two other professors and a visiting professor who knew the girls when they were children but hasn’t seen them since.

This gathering—Act 1—becomes a cauldron of volatile emotions, establishing the relationships between the characters and setting the stage for a series of confrontations, confessions and recriminations that quickly unravel the family’s carefully constructed myths.

The first half-hour is pretty rough going, not because of its content but because of its form. Alfieri and director Arthur Allan Seidelman have essentially put the stage play directly on screen, resulting in a stagy and excessively verbose film, with the actors pitching their performances toward the cheap seats. The dialogue is constant, using words, words and more words to say what a glance, a pause or a gesture could have expressed so much more simply and effectively.

Though it may have been a more successful film had it been rendered more cinematically, the filmed-play technique is a valid stylistic choice, and might have worked much better had the filmmakers stuck to it. But ultimately Alfieri and Seidelman give in and make a few tepid concessions to the cinema.

For instance, virtually the entire film takes place in the faculty lounge. However, the filmmakers attempt to paper over this with unnecessary flashbacks and cutaways. Gaps between scenes and acts are papered over as well, with clichéd montage sequences of turning leaves and couples removing their clothing used to communicate the passage of time and the changing of relationships, whereas a simple fade-out and fade-in would have sufficed.

There are many examples of stage plays successfully transferred to the screen without these compromises. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? comes to mind, a film that made excellent use of a single set and of highly educated and verbose characters. The Sisters could have used some of that confidence, locking its characters in that lounge for two hours and letting them have at it. Instead, the brief excursions outside the hall only serve to remind us of the artifice of the exercise.

The highlight is Maria Bello. She carries the film, forging through the material with charm, beauty and charisma, bringing to life the character of Marcia—proud, angry and fierce, yet battered, fragile and slightly unhinged.

Marcia flaunts her intelligence, her wit and her beauty, yet Bello does an excellent job of revealing that that very beauty is in fact the source of much of Marcia’s pain. We learn that she has always been something of an ornament adorning the men in her life: a surrogate society matron for her widowed father; a charming companion to her esteemed psychiatrist husband; an object to be displayed.

Marcia can be coy and seductive in flirtation, then doubly so by preemptively admitting to her coyness. Then doubly so again as she drapes herself across a sofa, like a patient on a psychiatrist’s couch, revealing—along with plenty of skin—the motivations and agony behind that coyness and seduction. This is all she knows how to do; it is both her survival technique and a trap she longs to escape. She puts herself on display, either physically or emotionally, at every opportunity; it is a role she has played for so long that she can no longer do anything else. Though she considers herself brutally honest, her outbursts and insults are little more than melodrama. Marcia is so enthralled by her own pain and her own drama—and her public performances of that drama—that she really has little understanding of her siblings. She has a few insights into them, but her badgering displays of self-absorption have only driven them into protective foxholes. What’s really at work here is not honesty at all; it’s deception, self-preservation and vitriol.

Most of the other actors do well enough with the material they’ve been given, but they’re essentially just playing types, marking time until each is granted one soul-baring expository scene to reveal their characters’ motivations and secrets—secrets which are rarely very surprising or insightful. Like much of the film, these details seem perhaps a little too rote—off-the-shelf Freudian explanations for characters who should and could be so much more interesting.

The Sisters was probably engaging and energetic on stage, and might have been on screen, but what we’re left with is a half-hearted hybrid of stage and screen, labored yet lacking, overwrought and underthought.

If ticket shock is the only thing stopping you from going to live jazz in clubs and concerts, you will not want to miss hearing the top-rated artists who will be performing al fresco and for free at the Jazz on 4th Street Festival this Sunday.

The Bill Bell Quartet, the Big Belly Blues Band, the John Santos Quintet, and the Berkeley High Jazz Orchestra plus two of its combos will all be on hand to entertain you and to give you a taste of what can come from top-flight musical pedagogy.

Public school jazz education began in Berkeley in 1966 when Herb Wong, the principal at Washington Elementary, offered a jazz class to his music students. It was not long before every school in the district had a jazz band.

When Phil Hardymon, who had worked with Wong at the grade school level, became band director at Berkeley High in 1975, he parlayed all the work that had gone on in the lower grades into the top-rated high school jazz education program in the country.

Berkeley High jazz bands and members regularly win state and national competitions and scholarships and have performed at the Monterey, North Sea and Montreux Jazz Festivals—and why not when their alumni include such stellar players as David Murray, Craig Handy, Josh Redman, Benny Green and Peter Apfelbaum?

What Herb Wong began has become a multi-generational community of teachers, alumni and students that gives the Berkeley jazz community a depth and resonance often lacking elsewhere. Unfortunately, major budget cuts are threatening this innovative and successful program.

The proceeds from this Tenth Annual Festival, sponsored by KCSM/Jazz 91, Yoshi’s and 4th Street Merchants, will benefit Berkeley High School Performing Arts to help ensure that the jazz program is able to continue.

Appropriately, the featured musician at this year’s festival is pianist, composer, arranger and revered music educator Bill Bell, known to many as the Jazz Professor. Bell has taught in colleges and universities for over three decades.

Although he just retired, he still holds adjunct professor positions in jazz at both UC Berkeley and Stanford University. From 1991 to 2001, he was the chairman of the College of Alameda’s music department. Trumpeter Jon Faddis, pianists Benny Green and Michael Wolfe and drummer Will Kennedy are just the most well-known of the thousands of players who have benefited from his instruction.

For all his work as a teacher, Bell made his name as a performing artist. He toured as musical director and accompanist for vocalist Carmen McRae and provided the same solid backing for other vocalists like Joe Williams, Anita O’Day, Nancy Wilson, Lou Rawls and the Supremes. He always knows what chords to play underneath a lyric to give just the right support to a jazz singer.

That same ability to feed a soloist the most stimulating changes made him a favorite with instrumentalists like Benny Carter, Louie Bellson, Milt Jackson, Clark Terry, Art Farmer and Kenny Burrell. One of his most impressive gigs was as choir director for a 1967 Duke Ellington Sacred Concert at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

It has long been known to both fans and visiting jazz stars that having Bill Bell accompanying you means having the best. His latest album, Just Swing Baby, indicates that Bell is just as sensitive, creative, swinging and virtuosic as ever.

Two other excellent bands with strong connections in the Bay Area complete the lineup. Like Bill Bell, Afro-Latin percussionist John Santos is an educator and scholar as well as a major performer who has worked with Latin stars like Yma Sumac, Tito Puente, Patato Valdés, Armando Peraza, Lalo Schifrin, Santana, Cachao and Omar Sosa as well as jazz masters like Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Art Farmer, Bobby Hutcherson, McCoy Tyner and John Faddis. His knowledge and experience of Afro-Latin percussion traditions, rooted in family, community, tradition, study, practice and meditation is profound.

The Big Belly Blues Band is a mid-size orchestra with a large sound that brings together horns, keyboards, bass, guitar and percussion plus vocalists to explore the affinities shared by jazz, blues, rhythm and blues and hip hop. Various combinations of the highly esteemed Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble will open and close the festivities.

The Bill Bell Quartet (1:15-2 p.m.), the Big Belly Blues Band (2:15–3 p.m.), the John Santos Quintet (3:10-4 p.m.), and the Berkeley High Jazz Orchestra and two combos (noon–1:15 p.m. and 4–5 p.m.) perform at the Tenth Annual Jazz on Fourth Street Festival, Sunday, May 21, noon-5 p.m., on Fourth Street in Berkeley, between Hearst Avenue and Virginia Street. For more information call 526-6294.

“I’ll spare no-one ... I’ll break with the whole human race.” In the darkness before curtain at the Berkeley Rep, the audience hears these ominous words. The lights go up on the set of a ruined drawing room, the salon of some great old house “before the Revolution” in France, walls stained with neglect and the ceiling drooping down.

It’s Moliere, but not The Misanthrope. The strange comedy we see begin through a plastic scrim as two young persons get up from the floor and quibble over their mutual devotion and chances for marriage, is The Miser, as adapted by David Ball and staged by Theatre de la Jeune Lune, guest touring company at The Berkeley Rep, under the direction of its cofounder, Dominique Serrand.

The two figures in the sidelit morning tableau are Elise, daughter of the title character (Sarah Agnew), and her secret beau, Cleante (Stephen Cartmell), sycophantic steward of the household and a castaway dignitary of Naples posing as a servant. Soon the whole cast suddenly leaps up from the corners where they’ve huddled unnoticed, like a pile of rags, reef the plastic scrim—and enter “the world’s least human human,” Harpagon (Steven Epp), The Miser.

As portrayed by Epp, Harpagon is a manic salamander of a creature, scurrying back and forth, tongue darting or lolling. Serrand has noted that it was only in the post-war French theater that Harpagon was shown as vigorous, standing upright, an innovation of Jean Vilar of the Theatre Nationale Populaire. There’s a moment of great physical humor in the close byplay between Harpagon and young La Fleche (Nathan Keepers), like mirror images of each other as they skitter nervously around the stage as The Miser shouts, “Like a tree waiting for a dog ... Your bulging eyes take in everything I own.”

Harpagon also rails at and strip-searches his own servants. Crazy invectives and great lines from Moliere’s original stand out in a blur of dialogue and speeches delivered with an odd, rickety syncopation, sometimes broken with inarticulate mouthings and odd gestures sawing the air.

The story jolts along amid much side business, which takes center stage. Both Harpagon’s children are desperate to marry. His gambler son Cleante (Stephen Cartmell), accouttered like a post-punk rooster, wants ingenue Mariane (Maggie Chestovich, with sharp gestures and poses), only to have his unwitting father as rival. Frosine (Barbara Kingsley), an older woman, serves as go-between.

In truth, the plot seems more a ploy for the cast to work back, with various schtick, through Moliere to the improvisations of his predecessors and inspiration, the Italian Commedia Dell’Arte troupes—a logical mission for a touring company founded by alumnai of the Ecole Jacques LeCoq.

But the sometimes mismatched and broken off routines aren’t so much lazzi as a showcase of The Three Stooges after a course of shock treatment. And the attitudinizing is less stylized, less grotesque than a warmed-over bizarrie-unto-itself. There’s often a kind of lassitude to the timing, a drag to the quirky pace of this long show, especially before intermission.

Some of this is a result of the curious halting vocal delivery, a version of the jerky claptrap that occurs either when stylized speech is translated too literally into highly-accented English, usually sounding like mumbling or babytalk, or to archly signal with its pauses that the dialogue’s an arty put-on (early John waters and later David Lynch films come to mind).

The articulation of more than the speech is slipshod, too, inconsistant even in regard to individual players’ mannerisms, much less the integration of gestural business in ensemble playing.

Serrand has mentioned “the comedy of tragedy” and a “language based on lies” in “a desperate world where because you’re dealing with a tyrant, everything has to be coded.”

But there’s less tragedy than anxiety, even stress, expressed onstage, and the social comment seems more on the level at times of an art school production, convinced that tragedy and comedy are euphemisms for self-display. The ultrachromatic, even atonal overtones of the show are reflected in the uncomplementary colors of the otherwise wellmade costumes, a kind of blotchy spectrum, for a postmodern parody of a parody, or burlesque of a burlesque.

Not all is over or underblown. There’s real talent for physical comedy in the players, and some of them execute very well within the constraints of all the conceptualism--especially David Rainey as Master Jacques, a recent addition to the cast, who turns a consistant, wonderfully nuanced performance. There are explosions of slapstick, and local performers GreyWolf (as Anselme) and an ensemble of six (including Clive Worsley) cringe, cavort and sound out (there’s not much strutting) on Riccardo Hernandez’s funhouse set.

It’s a little like that old story of George Kaufman backstage at a Marx Bros. show he wrote: Moliere can be imagined in the wings, saying, “I thought for a minute I heard one of my own lines ...” Too bad Jeune Lune missfires at the ultraburlesque shredding of conventions and expectations the Marxes reveled in.

THE MISER

Presented by the Berkeley Repertory Theatre through June 25 at the Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St. 647.2900. www.berkeleyrep.org

Atop Rose Hill Cemetery, I gaze out at the undulant hillsides and narrow canyon of Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. I share this peak with two hundred former 19th century residents—coal miners, their wives and children. Little remains as testament to their settlement, but their voices stir the trees. Sojourn at Black Diamond Mines to revisit past glories and relish present verdant splendor.

With almost 6,000 acres and 65 miles of trails, this is a vast parcel of preserved land, ideal for hiking, picnicking and observing wildlife. Within grassland, foothill woodland, mixed evergreen forest and chaparral, you’ll discover Coulter pine, black sage, desert olive and dudleya providing habitat for over 100 species of birds and common mammals. Add some exotic plantings and a springtime display of wildflowers deserving the attention of Monet and the urge to visit just increases.

Below the surface, Black Diamond Preserve offers a look into the past when coal, and then sand, were mined from its core. The discovery of coal in 1850 drew immigrants from all over the world to mine for “black diamonds.” During 40 years of existence over four millions tons of coal were removed, depleting, not the resource but the workforce. At the end of the coal era, the five boomtowns and their remaining residents packed up and left.

The next chapter in Black Diamond history came in the 1920s when sand mining began to extract high-grade silica used in glassmaking. With better and safer mining techniques, over 1.8 millions tons were removed from underground caverns by the end of World War II, when sand ballast from Belgium usurped the local product.

The East Bay Regional Park District came into the picture in the early 1970s when it acquired land for the preserve. One unfortunate chapter, the party and vandalism era, took place before the land was acquired, leaving its mark, though now less evident, on the mines and cemetery.

Approaching the Preserve on Somersville Road, I felt like I was leaving the world behind me. As the canyon narrowed it drew me forward until I was surrounded only by rural buildings and pristine landscape. I was ready for outdoor exploration. Since it was too early to tour the Visitor Center, I began my exploration with a walk up Nortonville Trail, once Road, to Rose Hill Cemetery. All around me were signs of new life: the tender leaves of trees of heaven emerging through last year’s seed clusters; purple vetch and blue lupine pushing up through thickets of grass; and the sounds of bumblebees, red winged blackbirds and the wind coursing through the foliage.

The Protestant Cemetery stands sentinel over the land’s reincarnation as a park. “Gone but not forgotten” read the stones. Life was precious in the 19th century and often too short. Mining accidents and epidemics of smallpox, diphtheria and scarlet fever took many before their time. Ages on marble and granite tombstones are carved in exact time: Mary Adams lived 49 months and 7 days, Daniel Richards 69 years, 1 month and 22 days. Four children in the Joseph family died before reaching nine years of age; by eight years most were already toiling in the mines. The cemetery remains as testament to the hard lives and the contributions of those who came for a new life.

Even when outside temperatures rise to uncomfortable levels, it’s always a crisp 56-degrees in the epic-size Greathouse Visitor Center, open to both human and canine visitor, whether on foot or on bike. Traverse a long narrow tunnel to experience how 1920s sand miners reached their underground chamber. Small lights strung at head level emit just enough light to examine the timbered walls and ceiling, shale sides and dripping water.

At tunnel’s end, a giant cavern opens up, vast in size and marked with evidence of its past, white areas of the desired silica, orange streaks formed of rust in the less desirable sandstone and black lines of the soot remaining from days when party bonfires burned illegally.

The center is nicely arranged with just enough exhibits, photographs, video and brochures for information, but without distracting from the cavern itself. Handsome wood cases hold vintage Lane’s Honey and Star Wine Vinegar, a sampling of the glassware produced from the mined high-grade silica. Further on, artifacts from the towns of Nortonville and Somersville—marbles, scissors, heavy iron, teapot and lock and key—are familiar in their commonality. Displays of coal samples, common rocks and Preserve wildflowers lend a science-hand. Souvenirs for budding miners include Hazel-Atlas hardhats, hardhat flashlights and park T-shirts and caps.

It’s a short but very scenic walk from the Visitor Center to the Hazel-Atlas Mine portal and the hillside above is a springtime display. Thick shrubs and grasses are polka-dotted with glittering colors: three-toned bush lupine in blue, violet and cream, yellow coreopsis with feathery leaves, red Indian paintbrush and white hemispherical yarrow.

You don’t need to purchase a hardhat and flashlight for the Hazel-Atlas Mine Tour; they’re included with the price of a ticket. You’ll be glad to have them, along with a sweatshirt, for the one-hour walk 400-feet into a restored silica mine. On my tour, park guide Lauren, enthusiastically instructed and entertained us with history, geology and mining techniques.

After locking the gate and brassing us in, the park guide showed us a narrated slide show describing precarious coal mining in 18-inch coal rooms. With an image of today’s park on screen, Lauren pointed out reminders of Somersville, like level areas and piles of rocks. The walking tour focused on sand mining techniques, in which I learned about adits, stopes, scaling rods, room-and-pillar mining, slusher buckets and fossils of ancient ghost shrimp in the sandstone walls.

Prolong your visit with a temperature-warming hike for further mine tunnel exploration or scene stealing views. Follow the Stewartville Trail past grassland and foothills to Prospect Tunnel, excavated in 1860. Use your flashlight to explore the two hundred feet of tunnel open to the public. Another option is Railroad Bed Trail, parallel to and above Somersville Road providing you with an overview of park terrain. Most trails connect up with others for loops and extensions; I used my trail map for reference.

Black locust trees planted by miners in the 1800s at the Lower Picnic Area shaded my final stop. Springtime added the perfume of white floral clusters decorating lacy leaves and age-old weathered trunks. Here I reflected on miners, coal, silica, wildflowers, rolling landscape and the importance of open space in our lives. Explore Black Diamond Mines Preserve, and honor this turn-of-the-century mining landmark and present day refuge.

IF YOU GO:

GETTING THERE: Take Hwy 4 to the Somersville Road exit in Antioch. Drive south (into the hills) on Somersville Road to the Preserve entrance.

Lying northwest of Hopkins Street between Gilman and Colusa, the Peralta Park tract straddles Berkeley and Albany across Codornices Creek. Built up in the 1920s, the neighborhood presents to the eye a sea of low stucco bungalows among which one can pick out a handful of Victorians.

Of the latter, three average-sized Queen Annes may be found along Hopkins Street. The other two, however, are giants boasting remarkable architectural features. Relics of a grander era, they stand as a reminder of the larger-than-life people who harbored bold visions for this land.

In the public domain until 1820, the area was part of the 44,800-acre Rancho San Antonio granted to Luís María Peralta for his services to the Spanish Crown. In 1842, Peralta divided the lands among his four sons, and José Domingo Peralta (1795–1865) received the portion that today comprises Berkeley and Albany from Alcatraz Avenue to El Cerrito Creek.

Having his pick of many prime locations for his home, Domingo settled on the bank of Codornices Creek, where he erected a 30x18-foot adobe (removed after the 1868 earthquake) and, in 1851, a two-story frame house (moved to the nearby Schmidt tract in 1872 and torn down in 1933, when UC owned the tract).

Had these structures survived in the original location, their address would be 1304 Albina Ave.

During the Gold Rush, cattle robbers, squatters, and fortune hunters whittled away Domingo’s possessions, and by 1853, he was forced to sell most of his land, reserving 300 acres around his house. Taxes and legal fees ate up the remaining acres by 1868.

Sixty of those acres were acquired by William Chapman Ralston (1826–1875), the boldest speculator on the Pacific coast, founder of the Bank of California, director of the Central Pacific Railroad, and builder of San Francisco’s fabled Palace Hotel. Never one to do anything on a small scale, Ralston was the first to have visions for Peralta Park, but his untimely death in the aftermath of a rush on his bank stopped any development for a while.

The executor of Ralston’s estate fraudulently used the land as collateral for an $8,000 loan from the California Insurance Company. When he defaulted on the loan, the company, founded by Caspar Thomas Hopkins in 1861, seized the land, and Hopkins set about looking for a buyer. In 1887 he found a fabulous one.

The man who reputedly peeled off $32,000 for a deed was Maurice Strelinger, aka M.B. Curtis (c. 1850–1920), a wildly successful actor who made his name playing the lead in the comedy “Sam’l of Posen” (more on him in a future story). Strelinger’s visions were as grand as Ralston’s. He planned an elegant subdivision, anchored by the luxurious, multi-turreted Peralta Park Hotel.

The hotel was to be surrounded by large houses on spacious lots, circled in turn by medium-sized houses on standard lots. Always highly leveraged, Strelinger recruited investors from among his San Francisco business and theatre connections, and some of them bought parcels and erected homes. In all, thirteen houses were built on the tract, including Strelinger’s own home at 1505 Hopkins Street. Six of the houses went up in 1889, all constructed by Lord & Boynton, who in the same year also built the Niehaus Brothers’ West Berkeley Planing Mill and George C. Pape’s East Berkeley Planing Mill.

Most of the six Peralta Park houses built in 1889 contained between eight and ten rooms. The largest belonged to the San Francisco physician Robert Macbeth and was located on a large creekside parcel on the east side of Albina Avenue. On the west side, also on outsize parcels, stood the houses of Anita Fallon and Julius Alfred Lueders. Although both of the latter survived, only the Lueders house at 1330 Albina remains on its original site.

The house was designed by Ira A. Boynton, who was related to Moses Chase, a former seafarer and forty-niner known to have been the first squatter on Antonio María Peralta’s land and the first American settler in Oakland. A New Englander, Boynton came to Berkeley in 1877 and lived on Berkeley Way. Among the houses he built locally are 2328 Channing Way (1889) and the Edward Brakenridge house (1892) at 1410 Bonita Avenue.

In 1895, Boynton’s daughter’s wedding took place in Joseph Clapp’s cottage at 2007 Berkeley Way. It is not known whether Boynton designed this Gothic Revival cottage, commonly known as the Morning Glory House (built c. 1878), but it’s possible, since Clapp was another transplanted New Englander.

For a while, Boynton was associated with Horace Kidder (later of the contracting firm Kidder & McCullough), but in the mid-1890s he was drawn by the building boom in Alaska and settled in Douglas. He died in Seattle in 1920.

Boynton’s client on Albina Ave. was one of the San Franciscans lured to Berkeley by Strelinger. According to his daughter, Mrs. Frieda Frohwerk, Julius A. Lueders moved his family from San Francisco to Peralta Park because his wife wanted to live in the country. Born in Germany, he “had no use for the Prussian military system, so came to San Francisco in 1877.”

The Berkeley Daily Gazette columnist Hal Johnson interviewed Mrs. Frohwerk in 1947, at which time she divulged that her father “had learned the perfumery business in Germany by serving a four-year-apprenticeship to a leading chemist.

He brought to California several formulas along with his family. In a few months he had worked up quite a business in perfumes in San Francisco. Interested in the life insurance business, he started his own life insurance company. And because he was particularly careful whom he insured, he prospered.”

Mrs. Frohwerk didn’t tell Johnson that her father was secretary of the Pacific Endowment League, a real-estate firm whose reputation was less than a stellar, and that the family finances were kept on an even keel through the exertions of her mother, Anna, a stern woman who operated a dress shop in San Francisco.

The Lueders house cost $4,900 and was second only to the Macbeth house, which came in at $6,900. In addition to ten rooms on the first and second floors, there was a third-story attic with four rooms and surmounted with a bell-shaped cupola. The three-acre lot was a block deep, extending from Albina to Fleurange Ave. (now Acton). The amenities included a gazebo, a large garden, a barn, and a well house with windmill. A gas plant on the premises provided illumination. The well water was still being used in 1947.

Julius and Anna Lueders had four children: Hilda, Frieda, Walter, and Edgar. Hilda was principal of the West Berkeley Kindergarten until she married George Bruns. Thereafter she helped her husband run the D.H. Bruns General Merchandising store and post office on the corner of San Pablo and University. Frieda attended the Sprague School in Peralta Hall (formerly the Peralta Park Hotel) before becoming a teacher in the West Berkeley Kindergarten. When Sunset Telephone & Telegraph introduced 24-hour telephone service, Frieda became the night operator.

Later she advanced to chief operator, and eventually went to work as a county employee. In middle age she married the carpenter William Frohwerk. Neither Walter nor Edgar married. Walter worked as a bookkeeper and Edgar as a mechanic. Both continued living with their mother at 1330 Albina. Walter bought the Bruns store, renamed West Berkeley Hardware. He died in 1924, and Edgar continued running the store until his own death in 1971.

In 1972, the Lueders house was acquired by Thomas Roe and his partner, who lovingly restored it, preserving the original first-floor rooms. They added a second turret on the south end, glazed the gazebo with windows salvaged from a Mills College demolition, and constructed a showcase kitchen, largely with salvaged materials. Still a work in progress, the house is one of the finest Victorians in the East Bay.

Everything ages and everything dies. It’s sad but it’s certainly true and no less for water heaters than for people, cats and presidential administrations. The funny thing about water heaters and electrical panels is that we don’t tend to think of them as getting old in the same way that we think about Aunt Martha. We see her getting older and increasingly forgetful, despite her being so adorable, even as she searches for her car keys (should she still be driving?)

Actually, water heaters and furnaces, garbage disposers and, yes, foundations have life cycles just like Aunt Martha and your dog, Mr. Buggles. I think we all need to see these things a bit more in this way since it seems so very widespread that people tend to express real surprise when I tell them that an item is getting old or is ready for the heap. “Well, it’s worked just fine, all these years” they sometimes say and sure as this may be true, it doesn’t take into account the fact that said item, the furnace for example, may have commenced to leak flue gases into the living space.

Yes it still comes on and heats the house but there may be any number of unseen things that aren’t working as they should or may be nearing a point at which it is unlikely that they will function at all.

Let’s start with the general issue of wear and function. When devices, such as the breakers in electrical panels, are new, we can eliminate from the equation most aberrant performance based on wear.

As such devices age, they are subject to a range of natural forces. A spring loses it’s springiness from metal fatigue, corrosion forms on parts, which may play a critical role, things get dirty and fail to operate smoothly from the contamination of foreign particles, heat or cold may gradually wear upon parts and cause them to malfunction.

There are too many natural forces to list here but you get the general idea. Even if you do nothing else to a breaker, a dishwasher or a phone jack, over time it’s going to be exposed to elements that will wear upon it and eventually prevent it from functioning properly.

In the case of the electrical breaker, the spring metal inside is wearing from being sprung as well as from the heat created by electricity running through it. Over time, it will become less responsive and may eventually fail to work altogether.

Another reason that things eventually want to be replaced is that they are failing to take advantage of innovations in science and technology that we come to consider either highly desirable or baseline essentials. Most of us would not drive a car that didn’t have a seat belt despite the fact that they were not present in cars 40 years ago.

One might say, “Hey the car drives, what are you complaining about” and most would respond, “Well, my life is at risk without one and I don’t want to drive without it.” Increasingly, we have come to feel this way about air bags, tempered glass and ABS brakes as well, despite the fact that you don’t really have to have them to drive.

The same is true in your house. I wouldn’t live in a house that didn’t have smoke detectors because they exist and can save my life, as well as the lives of my two girls and my wife. I also have a carbon monoxide tester running 24/7 in the hall. Same reason. It’s not essential but it’s available and it might save our lives.

This logic extends to all the equipment in the house and to elements of the house itself, such as the roofing, the siding and the foundation. Some older systems simply lack the advantage that modern advances have to offer. Most houses around here weren’t built with enough bolts or enough inherent bracing to survive a large earthquake and most modern houses were.

This is one example where an alteration can update us to a close equivalent of modern safety standards. This is true of some other systems as well.

Single glazed window sashes can often be replaced with double glazed replacements providing better heat conservation and sound reduction but this isn’t really a safety issue. On the other hand, an old electrical breaker (I keep hitting that note) can, in my opinion become far less reliable over time and can usually be replaced, even within an existing panel to improve fire safety.

An older heat exchanger in a furnace can also, often, be replaced when it has become worn or cracked although I would argue that the additional cost of an entirely new furnace is so well offset by the many advantages that come with a newer unit that a repair is rarely worthwhile. New furnaces are not only far more efficient than older ones (PG&E told us last October that energy prices were expected to rise by 71 percent in response to Katrina), but also offer a range of improved safety features as well as simplified flues that can eliminate costly and ugly installations.

Many older features of houses are extremely desirable and I sorely wish that modern builders would more frequently take lessons that present themselves visibly in so many of our older houses and exploit them in what it built today.

Nonetheless, old floor furnaces are dangerous, smelly, inefficient and best replaced by the myriad newer choices that modern technology has brought us. Similarly, a breaker panel in a convenient location has real advantages over a small fuse panel that’s buried at the back of a clothes closet.

If we all tended to think of our houses the same way we think of our computers we might be a little better off. That ancient furnace in the basement is a hard drive that’s skipping and only has 20 megabytes of memory. With that old wiring of yours and one outlet per room, it take you 30 seconds to download a page off the internet and those old Windows of yours … Well, you know.

Gardening is like fishing in some ways. You can do it for dinner, or just for the halibut; you can do it for purely recreational or aesthetic reasons, or both. It can give you peace and relaxation, or vein-popping frustration. It helps a lot to know the natural history of the place and of your target. You can do it for very little money, or you can go broke buying fascinating tools and gadgets.

I’m a collector at heart but also nearly broke most of the time, so I hover between the extremes. I have more tools than many folks because I worked as a pro for some years. But my favorites, the reliables I use most often, can mostly fit on my jeans pockets plus one hand for the long ones. It’s a good idea for a new gardener to start with the basics and then add the equivalents of Victorian specialty silverware, the asparagus tongs and the left-handed runcible spoons, as the garden progresses.

The two things I always have in my pockets are my Felcos and my hori-hori.

I don’t endorse commercial brands often, but Felco brand pruning shears are the only ones worth buying. They’re a big investment at first—in the $50.00 range—but if you don’t lose them they’re the last pair you’ll ever have to buy, because every part is replaceable at a reasonable price. Blades are easy to sharpen, and after a few years of hard use or abuse you’ll pay under ten bucks—usually about six—for a new one. Felcos come in many sizes and configurations, including left-handed, and you really need to try them on like shoes. It’s worth the effort; you’ll know when you have the right fit.

Between the fit and the sharpness, you’ll save damage to your joints and other vulnerable bits, and to the plants you cut. I keep my Felcos sharp with a couple of inexpensive hones that look and work like emery boards; got them at a cutlery shop.

A hori-hori is a Japanese farmers’ tool that’s become popular here too. It’s a broad, heavy knife, not terribly sharp, with a scooped central channel and one serrated edge. It has a wooden grip and a full tang: the metal of the blade runs all the way through, the handle. This makes it very strong; I frequently use mine by sticking the blade under a stubborn weed and stepping on the handle, to lever the thing out. I’ve never damaged a hori-hori this way.

In fact, I’ve never damaged one significantly at all. This includes the one that spent at least a year under a compost pile. When Saint Anthony finally got around to answering those prayers, the hori-hori was rusted and the handle just a bit loose. That full tang meant the loose handle doesn’t compromise its function one bit, and the rust came off with a few uses, so I didn’t even have to scour it. In fact, I used it brutally enough to wedge some clay under the grip and it’s not loose anymore.

In future columns I’ll talk about bigger and weirder tools, and the places I like to get them.

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Edward Holbrock, Prof. of Law on “Estate Planning” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925 or 665-9020.

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Friday until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com

“Organizing Your Life as a Spiritual Practice” with Eve Abbott at 7:30 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Cost is $15-$25, registration required. 528-8844.

Berkeley Chess School classes for students in grades 1-8 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. A drop-in, rated scholastic tournament follows from 7 to 8 p.m. at 1581 LeRoy Ave., Room 17. 843-0150.

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. 845-1041.

Basic Organic Vegetable Gardening Learn how to grow your own food, taught by Herman Yee, an avid gardener who has worked in many community garden projects in the East Bay. Bring sunscreen, hat, and sun protection if needed. Class will be held in Albany, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Pre-registration required. Cost is $15-$10. 548-2220, ext. 233.

West Stege Marsh Restoration Volunteers are needed to assist with the on-going effort to restore a portion of West Stege marsh, its surrounding uplands, and adjacent grassland, on the UC’s Richmond Field Station from 9 a.m. to noon. 665-3689.

Latino College Day for Chicanos and Latinos in the East Bay Area. Information on admissions, financial aid, scholarships and special programs, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Laney College, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. 464-3161.

Foster Youth Alliance Walkathon & Resource Fair in support of youth transitioning from foster care. Registration begins 9 a.m., Walk begins 10 a.m.; Resource Fair open until 1:30 pm. at the Lake Merritt Band Stand Area near Fairyland, Oakland. Walkathon fee is $35, $15 for children and seniors, free for current and former foster youth up to age 24. 428-9821. www.fosteryouthalliance.org

The West County Coalition to Inform Voters Democratic Candidates Forum from 1 to 5 p.m. at John and Jean Knox Center for the Performing Arts, Contra Costa College, 2600 Mission Bell Drive, San Pablo. 233-2786, 215-5780.

California Writers Club meets to discuss “Surprise Characters: Animators or Antagonists?” at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble, Jack London Square. 272-0120.

Satsuki Arts Festival & Bazaar with San Jose Taiko, other performers, a variety of Japanese food, Asian arts and crafts, a silent auction and carnival games. From 4 to 9 p.m. , and noon to 7 p.m. on Sun. at Berkeley Buddhist Temple, 2121 Channing Way. Free. 841-1356.

Lead-Safety for Remodeling, repair and painting of older homes. A HUD & EPA approved class held in Oakland from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. To register, call Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program at 567-8280. www.ACLPPP.org

Pre-School Storytime for 3-5 year olds at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., through June 22. 526-3720, ext. 17.

“Plentiful Poppies” Wildflower discovery day for children and their families from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. www.museumca.org

“Shake it, Don’t Break It” A family earthquake program from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. www.museumca.org

Bug Patrol for ages 6 to 12 from 1:30 to 3 p.m. to hunt for local creepy crawlies around the Tilden Nature Center. Fee is $3. 525-2233.

California Wildflower Show from noon to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. www.museumca.org

Botanical Illustration Demonstration with Catherine Watters using fresh wildflowers from the Museum’s California Wildflower Show, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. www.museumca.org

Victorian Preservation Center of Oakland invites the public to view the ongoing preservation projects at the Cohen-Bray House, built in 1884, from noon to 4 p.m. at 1440 29th Ave., Oakland. Donation of $10 requested. www.cohen-brayhouse.info

Berkeley CyberSalon “Is the Future of Music Now?” with Gerd Leonhard, author of “The Future of Music”; Tom Conrad, CTO of Pandora; Ann Greenberg, cofounder of ION; Brian Zisk, founder and board member of the Future of Music Coalition; and Amy Tobin, singer, composer, and multimedia show producer, at 5 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $15.

KIDsational Fashion Benefit for Music in the Community at 5 p.m. at Black Repertory Group, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $15-$20. 652-2120.

Meet the Guinea Pigs Learn all about guinea pigs and how enjoyable they can be as companion animals for every family member, from 2 to 4 p.m. at RabbitEARS, 303 Arlington Ave., behind ACE Hardware, Kensington. 525-6155.

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org

Embracing Diversity Films “Out of the Shadow” a documentary of a woman with paranoid schizophrenia, at 7 p.m. at Albany High School Library, 603 Key Route Blvd. Enter through gym doors on Thousand Oaks Blvd. Suitable for children over 12. Free. Discussion follows 527-1328.

Berkeley PC Users Group Problem solving and beginners meeting to answer, in simple English, users questions about Windows computers. At 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. corner of Eunice. 527-2177.

Being in the World: Transforming Our Relationships with “Opponents” and “Enemies” with Donald Rothberg at 7:30 p.m. Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley. 527-2935.

Raging Grannies of the East Bay invites new folks to come join us from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. to sing and have fun at Berkeley Gray Panthers office, 1403 Addison St., in Andronico’s mall. 548-9696.

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. In case of questionable weather, call around 8 a.m. 215-7672, 524-9992.

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991.

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, who may be accompanied by an adult. We will learn about the seasons from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684.

Walking Tour of Old Oakland “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. and the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours

“The Immigration Dilemma: What Kind of Country Are We?” with Cary Sanders, Policy Analyst for The California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative, at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. Sponsored by the Berkeley East-Bay Gray Panthers. 548-9696.

“Zink: The Myth, The Legend, The Zebra” A musical play by Park Day School, Wed. and Thurs. at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Suggested donation $10 for adults and $5 for children at the door.

“Till You Find Your Dream” Broadway selections, American folk and popular music by the Cantare Chorale and All Star Singers at 7:30 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$25. 836-0789.

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra at 8 pm at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. www.ypsomusic.net

Hip Hop Festival at 7 p.m. and Dream, El Efe and Company of Prophets at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15 for both shows, or $10 for each. 849-2568.

Storytelling Festival from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area in El Sobrante. Tickets are $11 for a single event, $55 for the entire weekend. 869-4946. www.bayareastorytelling.org

Joe Fischer will discuss his new book “Poker Passion” at 2 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087.

Volti and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra “Our Voices Rise in Song Together” at 4 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way, at Ellsworth. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-771-3352. www.voltisf.org

Organ Music at St. John's with Roberta Gary, University of Cincinatti, in an an all-Bach recital on the Brombaugh organ at 4 p.m. at St. Johns Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Donation $15. Reception follows performance. 845-6830.

Oakland School for the Arts Big Band, Drum Corp, and Percussion Ensemble at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Donations benefit Oakland School for the Arts. 228-3207.

“Our definition of opera is that it has music more interesting and complex than musical theater,” said Harriet March Page, artistic director of Goat Hall Productions, which will be staging Fresh Voices VI with 10 short operas—as well as bookending their NOW Festival of new compositions and a program of art songs—Thursday through Sunday for the next two weeks at Thick House on Potrero Hill in San Francisco.

Besides her expanded definition of opera, Page said that Fresh Voices is committed to accessible operatic storylines, even “to do something a little political.” This explains in part the festival’s subtitle or motto, “Pipers & Puppets,” taken from Music Director Mark Alburger’s piece, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” (from the Robert Browning poem, but insinuating that a present-day president may be the piper to more than just hordes of terrorist rats), as well as the sock puppets that cropped up as choruses in a couple of the works that will be staged.

The “motto” goes on to ask, “Who’s piping the tune ... and who’s dancing?”

“This year, we wanted to do something thematic, “ said Page, “which followed as soon as I got onto the Pied Piper Principle. The Pied Piper is at once puppet and puppet master. I see at least a little bit of it in all our pieces—but of course, no theme is worthy unless it can be expanded to fit everything!”

Music Director Alburger said the festival included a wide range of music and themes.

“Lisa Scola Prosek’s ‘Leonardo’s Notebooks’ is highly melodic, with a minimalist thing, yet a feeling for traditional Bel Canto,” he said. “Steven Clark’s ‘Amok Time’ has vocal lines taken from a Star Trek episode, which will be played silently behind the singers, to a tongue-in-cheek insipid pop score that goes from swing to reggae. My own ‘Pied Piper’ features a severe reworking, or rat poisoning, of classic material, with ‘Cosi Fan Tutti’ under there, somewhere.”

Other delights include: John Beeman’s four minute “Dear Composer” (rejection letters from festivals and conductors in counterpoint against a pseudo-jazz score) and Connie Tyler’s “relentlessly Celtic” hagiography of the Irish saint, “Brigid, Fiery Arrow.” Another legendary strong woman is eulogized in John Partridge’s “Joan of Arc.” Mark Alburger’s score is combined with Harriet Page’s words for “Cats, Dogs and Divas.” “The Music Department,” is Allan Crossman’s day in the life of a conservatory that goes from Mozart to “an intergalactic Ed Sullivan show.”

The first of two operas featuring sock puppets is “Eye Eye Sailor” by Steven Clark and Michael Wertz. The other sock puppet entry, “The Fashion God,” Brian Holmes’ operatic settings of FEMA’s ex-director Michael D. Brown’s self-regarding emails. Holmes also is represented by “Tales of the Cultural Revolution,” based on an incident “I heard about from the Canadian Brass, who were among the first to tour China after the purges. Apparently, Madame Mao heard a piece with a tuba that so offended her sensibilities, she demanded the player be fired. This was interpreted that all tuba players should be fired.”

Sundays will be dedicated to nonoperatic works, “Songs for the 21st Century” on May 21 and the NOW Festival on May 28, which Alburger said may have an entry by Lukas Foss.

FRESH VOICES IV

Thursday through Sunday May 18-21 and May 25-28 at the Thick House, 1695 18th St., San Francisco. $15-$25. For more information, including show times, call (415) 401-8081.

Lemons aren’t the only fruit trees growing in Berkeley’s streetside strips. Yes, we have some bananas.

Parts of the East Bay and San Francisco are known as “banana belts” because they have slightly higher average temperatures than the rest of the place. It doesn’t take much, just a few degrees Fahrenheit, to tip the balance to a friendly microclimate—most years—for tropical and semitropical plants. The Mission in San Francisco gets more sun than the outer avenues, for an example that’s hardly a surprise.

There’s a sort of nanoclimate strip through Berkeley that, on a good day, might include the neighborhood of the Daily Planet’s office, and a broader swath of East Oakland where people can grow hot peppers and big tomatoes. The banana belts on this side of the bay are, in my experience, less predictable than San Francisco’s unless you have the time to perch on a hill, watch the fog patterns, and hold a finger to the wind all day.

Or you could walk around looking for big bananas. Banana trees.

They aren’t technically trees, of course; they’re even shrubs mostly by courtesy. A banana plant is typically big but the whole thing is herbaceous, not woody. The functional equivalent of a trunk might strike you, if you’ve ever seen one cut down, as a sort of vertical green onion structure of leaves tightly wrapped in more leaves until the whole is strong enough to support a broad umbrella of extravagantly big floppy feather-shaped leaves. These hang along a central midrib in various configurations, depending on the variety of the plant, and generally get shredded into little pennants by the wind.

The Oxford Companion to Food, which I recommend reading if you can heft it, calls this “a neat evolutionary adaptation to lower their wind resistance, for the ‘trunk’ is not as strong as a real tree trunk and risks being blown down.”

Like most adaptations, it’s not perfect, and they get blown down sometimes anyway. Don’t fret; the stalk dies back anyway after flowering and maybe fruiting, and the whole plant retreats to its bulbous tuber. Over a few years, it grows offsets from that cache of energy, and makes its own little grove. Offsets—“pups”—can be separated from the central plant along with some roots, and replanted elsewhere.

What fouls up bananas here is not so much pests as cold, poorly drained clay soils. The plant likes rich, well-drained humus, warmth, and lots of moisture but not soggy root zones.

Even those of us who shop at the Berkeley Bowl or the produce stores on East 14th or whatever they call it this year might be surprised at the variety of bananas in existence. Your basic Cavendish or Gros Michel, the yellow ones you see everywhere, aren’t the half of it; one Georgia grower mentions ripe fruit that can be green, pink, red, orange or purple, and the classic cooking banana, generally labeled “platanos” on grocery shelves and restaurant menus, is best for baking when it’s good and black outside.

Hide color isn’t all that varies. Descriptions of flavors—“sweet but sharp,” “aromatic,” “approaching apple”—make me curious mostly because they’re so vague. I’m not sure that precision would be more helpful, though. Durian has been closely described, as by Alfred Russell Wallace (“… indescribable. A rich butter-like custard highly flavoured with almonds,,, intermingled with it come wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, brown sherry…”) but there’s something to it that no one has quite named, and I can’t either. Good tho’, as Utah Philips says.

Banana flowers, meaning the male part of the inflorescence, and banana leaves have their culinary uses too, cooked or cooked-in. Aside from wrapping sweet rice for desserts, the leaves, used to line a cooking pot, give the rice a nice flavor even when they burn a little on the bottom.

In spite of the assertion that some edible banana varieties can be grown as far north as Kentucky, most of the ones I know personally are decorative. They’re handsome and evocative, and the red and mottled cultivars are spectacular. Still, I wonder if we might give the big corporations as well as the scary Panama Wilt disease a bit of competition by growing our own.

Public Hearing on the David Brower Center at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, 2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 981-6900.

Wilderness First Aid Basics with certified wilderness EMT David Yacubian at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140.

Strawberry Tasting at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Derby St. at MLK Jr. Way. Samples and book signing with Jessica Prentice, author of “Full MoonFeast: Food and the Hunger Connection.” 548-3333.

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992.

Family Story Time at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Branch Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Free, all ages welcome. 524-3043.

“The Making of a Revolutionary” a new film about Israel’s conscientious objectors at 7:30 p.m at Grand lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Cost is $10-$13. Benefits Jewish Voice for Peace. 465-1777.

League of Women Voters Annual Meeting with guest speaker Daniel Purnell, Oakland Public Ethics Commission on “Let the Sun Shine on City Government” at 5 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Cost is $15. 843-8824. http://lwvbae.org

“Invisible Ballots” and “Help America Vote ... On Paper” two documentaries on the problems with electronic voting at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St. Donation of $5 accepted.

Safe Medicine Disposal Day Don’t flush or trash medicine! Bring old medicines to Oakland City Hall between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. for safe disposal. www.baywise.org

Classes in English and Citizenship offered by the Oakland Adult Education program Mon.-Fri. from 6 to 9 p.m. Free. Register at Lincoln Elementary School, 225 11th St., room 205. 879-8131.

American Red Cross Blood Ser Volunteer Orientation from 6 to 8 p.m. at its headquarters in Oakland. We need your help to support the more than 40 blood drives held each month all over the East Bay, evenings and weekends included. For more information, phone Anne at 594-5165.

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840.

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m.

THURSDAY, MAY 18

Bike to Work Day Ride your bike to work and see how fast, healthy, and fun it can be. Energizer Stations throughout Alameda County. 415-246-8078. www.511.org

“Insects of Lake Merritt and Greater Oakland” with Eddie Dunbar at 12:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200.

“Shopping with the Chef” with Jessica Prentice on how she makes shopping decisions at 3:30 p.m. at the North Shattuck Farmer’s Market. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. at the LeConte School cafeteria. Councilmember Worthington will give an update of City affairs. Paving over back and side yards, Earthquake retrofitting, Bus Rapid Transit and Helping curb auto theft will be discussed. 843-2602.

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755.

Historical & Current Times Book Group meets on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1249 Marin Ave. 548-4517.

FRIDAY, MAY 19

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Edward Holbrock, Prof. of Law on “Estate Planning” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020.

Basic Organic Vegetable Gardening Learn how to grow your own food, taught by Herman Yee, an avid gardener who has worked in many community garden projects in the East Bay. Bring sunscreen, hat, and sun protection if needed. Class will be held in Albany, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Pre-registration required. Cost is $15-$10. 548-2220, ext. 233.

West Stege Marsh Restoration Volunteers are needed to assist with the on-going effort to restore a portion of West Stege marsh, its surrounding uplands, and adjacent grassland, on the UC’s Richmond Field Station from 9 a.m. to noon. 665-3689. www.thewatershedproject.org

Berkeley History Center Walking Tour: “The Sisterna Tract in West Berkeley: A Small Chilean Ranch Transformed” led by Stephanie Manning, from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0181.

Walking Tour of Old Oakland uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234.

Latino College Day for Chicanos and Latinos in the East Bay Area. Information on admissions, financial aid, scholarships and special programs, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Laney College, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. 464-3161.

Foster Youth Alliance Walkathon & Resource Fair in support of youth transitioning from foster care. Registration begins 9 a.m., Walk begins 10 a.m.; Resource Fair open until 1:30 pm. at the Lake Merritt Band Stand Area near Fairyland, Oakland. Walkathon fee is $35, $15 for children and seniors, free for current and former foster youth up to age 24. 428-9821. www.fosteryouthalliance.org

The West County Coalition to Inform Voters Democratic Candidates Forum from 1 to 5 p.m. at John and Jean Knox Center for the Performing Arts, Contra Costa College, 2600 Mission Bell Drive, San Pablo. 233-2786, 215-5780.

California Writers Club meets to discuss “Surprise Characters: Animators or Antagonists?” at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble, Jack London Square. 272-0120.

Satsuki Arts Festival & Bazaar with San Jose Taiko, other performers, a variety of Japanese food, Asian arts and crafts, a silent auction and carnival games. From 4 to 9 p.m. , and noon to 7 p.m. on Sun. at Berkeley Buddhist Temple, 2121 Channing Way. Free. 841-1356.

Lead-Safety for Remodeling, repair and painting of older homes. A HUD & EPA approved class held in Oakland from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. To register, call Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program at 567-8280. www.ACLPPP.org

Pre-School Storytime for 3-5 year olds at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., through June 22. 526-3720, ext. 17.

“Plentiful Poppies” Wildflower discovery day for children and thier families from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. www.museumca.org

“Shake it, Don’t Break It” A family earthquake program from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. www.museumca.org

Bug Patrol for ages 6 to 12 from 1:30 to 3 p.m. to hunt for local creepy crawlies around the Tilden Nature Center. Fee is $3. 525-2233.

California Wildflower Show from noon to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. www.museumca.org

Botanical Illustration Demonstration with Catherine Watters using fresh wildflowers from the Museum’s California Wildflower Show, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. www.museumca.org

Victorian Preservation Center of Oakland invites the public to view the ongoing preservation projects at the Cohen-Bray House, built in 1884, from noon to 4 p.m. at 1440 29th Ave., Oakland. Donation of $10 requested. www.cohen-brayhouse.info

Berkeley CyberSalon “Is the Future of Music Now?” with Gerd Leonhard, author of “The Future of Music”; Tom Conrad, CTO of Pandora; Ann Greenberg, cofounder of ION; Brian Zisk, founder and board member of the Future of Music Coalition; and Amy Tobin, singer, composer, and multimedia show producer, at 5 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $15.

KIDsational Fashion Benefit for Music in the Community at 5 p.m. at Black Repertory Group, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $15-$20. 652-2120.

Meet the Guinea Pigs Learn all about guinea pigs and how enjoyable they can be as companion animals for every family member, from 2 to 4 p.m. at RabbitEARS, 303 Arlington Ave., behind ACE Hardware, Kensington. 525-6155.

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org